What Omni-Channel Retail means for your Black Friday 2023 Customer Experience

What to expect from Black Friday 2023

Black Friday is fast approaching, signaling the start of the holiday shopping season. Set against a backdrop of increasing economic downturn and a cost of living crisis, this year’s holiday season is expected to have a lower-than-expected total spend, with almost half of shoppers planning on spending less than last year. Retailers face an unprecedented challenge of maintaining customer satisfaction at every stage of the customer journey to maximize potential profits.

Businesses that rise to the holiday shopping challenge, using the opportunity to provide first-class customer experience (CX), will have an advantage over competitors that aren’t able to adapt and navigate consumer issues.

With omni-channel retail experiences becoming the new normal, what can Black Friday retailers do to prepare?

What is omni-channel retail?

Omni-channel retail experiences cross the boundaries of the physical and the digital, are conducted over multiple channels, and leverage customer data to create personalized experiences. In other words, the omni-channel shopping experience can begin online and end in-store, vice versa, or even alternate between the two. It takes the form the customer feels most comfortable with; whether digital or in-person.

Creating a memorable omni-channel retail experience requires four things:

• Scalability

• Flexibility across channels

• Data-powered personalization

• Intelligent automation that supports your agents

If you can perfect omni-channel retail, you can make a success of Black Friday and the rest of the holiday season. How can your business deliver these four crucial elements of the omni-channel retail experience, and what are the benefits of doing so?

Scaling for the holiday season

The first, and most essential step in preparing for Black Friday is ensuring that your contact center is scalable. When demand spikes during the holiday season, you can’t afford to let even a single call drop. If your CX infrastructure still hinges on an on-prem solution, you may struggle to add the capacity necessary to meet demand. A cloud-based contact center, which enables your agents to work flexibly, is essential here. This contact center should have exceptional availability, to ensure that you are available to your customers at all times throughout the holiday season.

Mastering omni-channel customer journeys

The second step is to master the art of the omni-channel shopping journey. Whether your customers want to buy online and pick up in-store, or browse in person before placing an order online, you need to be ready to accommodate that. The customer journey should be seamless across platforms.

In the frenzied atmosphere of the holiday season, when customers face time pressure to secure the best deals before they sell out, providing instant contact in the event of a problem is essential. Social media, SMS, web chat, or voice calls; customers will expect to be able to contact your business over any of these. You have to empower your agents to respond instantly, and to handle interactions that move over multiple channels.

Making the most of customer data

The third step is to put customer data at the core of every interaction. Customer data should be stored centrally and collected from every channel, allowing the customer to pick up where they left off. Any employee that interacts with the customer should have instant access to this data. This will enable staff to deliver personalized greetings, helpful recommendations, and to know instantly whether they have previously reported a problem. A comforting, memorable experience during the holiday season can turn a customer from a bargain hunter into a loyal customer for life.

Omni-channel automation

The final step is automation. Black Friday and the seasonal period are defined by pressure. Delivering outstanding CX when your agents are (sometimes literally) overwhelmed might seem impossible, but there are ways around this issue. An AI-backed Machine Agent can automate certain simple inquiries, allowing your human agents to deal only with the most complex.

An accessible knowledge base, structured by intelligent decision trees, allow your customers to self-serve throughout the year. An online chatbot equipped with Natural Language Processing (NLP) can comprehend unstructured speech, and provide customers with instant answers. When equipped with customer data, speedy, automated resolutions become even easier. Pressure on your staff is lifted, without compromising on exceptional CX.