Rethink Retail: Deliver the Connected Customer Experiences
According to a research conducted by Big Commerce: 67% of the millennials prefer to shop online rather than in-store. The millennials, also known as the Echo Boomers: the largest generation of young people that makes approximately 30% of the population in Pakistan only.

Globally the retail
industry has entered into a new era
— an era in which the digital consumer has essentially changed their
buying behaviors through the usage of the latest technologies. The
digital consumers literally carry the retail in their pockets now. On
the contrary, for too many retailers the digital shift is more of a
multi-channel strategy. Responsive website? Check! Mobile App? Check!
Active Social Media Channels? Check! The focus is on delivering a
checklist of disparate digital channels and not on building a cohesive
customer experience. Although, the term Omni channel has become a part
of the day to day vocabulary of retailers; however, too many of them
are struggling to understand the true essence of it — that is heavily
reliant on the fluid demands of the digital customers.
To stay
relevant, retailers need to deeply understand the shifting behavior and
habits of always-on-the-go customers; improve technologies and
platforms to exceed the customer expectations across the channels; and
anticipate and get ready for the future needs of these digital
customers. Now is the time to rethink and redefine the digital
transformation in the retail sector.
The connected
customer experience has become a new El Dorado for the
retailers. The realization of its full potential demands an outside-in
approach — ultra-focused on customers and agile enough to respond to
the ever-changing needs of the market. Unlike the past, when businesses
were driven by Inside-out thinking in which strategies were developed
internally with the focus largely on the internal viewpoints, the
outside-in approach starts with the questions what customers really
need?; What value can your products deliver to the customers; and then
designing your offerings around those ideas.
The outside-in
approach is simple. It requires retailers to keep their digital assets
flexible and to be able to collaborate with external partners to design
new products and services quickly. This process — exchanging
information to and fro the systems and formulating a cohesive,
frictionless experience for the ender users— requires open APIs.
Well-managed APIs enable the retailers to allow developers to connect
with the legacy systems and mix and match data to deliver new products,
services and applications quickly, at scale.
It will not be
incorrect to say that the retailers today are battling in the
micro-moments of the digital customers. The moments like I-want-to-know
and I-want-to-buy, are the ones that trigger the customers to pick up
the mobile and search for the relevant options. The buying decisions
take place in a matter of seconds. In such an environment,
cohesiveness, reliability, and speed become an integral part of the
whole system. And only those retailers remain competitive who can
transform these micro-moments into profoundly connected customer
experiences.