Is Communication the Key to Success in OmniChannel Retail?

I just finished reading Paul Murphy's blog post over on Fourth Source and he raised a few excellent points about the costs, concerns and challenges facing retailers who try to go omnichannel. While the article is focused on the UK, who have long been ahead of North America in online shopping, he raises some points that enterprises on this side of the pond could pick up on and use to win.

According to his post, 56% of John Lewis shoppers chose collect their orders in the store. Providing the inventory count is correct, it shouldn't be a big issue right? But shoppers are impatient people, so it's now on the store to know who the customer is when they get there and have the order somewhere that it can be picked quickly and easily. This would also be a great opportunity to personalize the experience, as you know a bit about the customer when they come to get their items.

Paul also points out that email may not be the best way to reach a potential customer to re-market to them or let them know their order is ready.

email open rates for the retail sector currently are 23.6%, making them too unreliable for this application. SMS by comparison has an open rate of over 95% and is available

 With the advent of cheap cloud messaging services like Twillio, SMS or MMS is a viable & cost effective way of reaching consumers. The key here though, will be to ensure the messages are timely, useful and written in a way that they feel personal. The text message stream is more sacred the inbox in my opinion.