When you expect the “unexpected,” you can set your business up to “weather turbulent times,” according to an update from Adyen.
If the past few years of the global pandemic have done anything, “they’ve proven that adage true.”
When it became clear that the retail, hospitality, and food and beverage (F&B) sectors were about to take a big hit due to restrictions, businesses worldwide “took the opportunity to adapt to create flexible, tech-driven experiences that blurred the lines between sales channels.”
The result? In their 2022 Retail Report together with KPMG, Adyen found that companies who unified their commerce and payments across channels “have come out of the pandemic stronger than ever.”
By breaking down internal and technological barriers with cross-channel payments, companies are “facilitating increasingly non-linear customer journeys – and setting a new standard for the post-pandemic customer experience along the way.”
Adyen has taken a closer look at the most pressing industry trends and “how they will influence current and future digital strategies.”
According to the Fintech firm, here are their main takeaways.
1. The time to invest in digital transformation was yesterday
Whether or not to invest in digitization “is no longer a question.”
The need to make products available with limited access to brick-and-mortar stores has seen many companies prioritize digitizing operations across the business, “with the goal of connecting systems and increasing agility.”
Payments are increasingly included in this strategy, “from linking frontend sales channels to integrating payments with backend inventory management and supply chains.”
Companies who have embraced the opportunity of digital transformation during the pandemic “have come out on top.”
Adyen research shows that those who connected their payment systems to other parts of their business have “seen an increase in growth of 9% over those who haven’t, and are expecting substantial additional growth in the next year.”
The opportunity and necessity of breaking down silos and integrating operations into the larger customer experience are “felt across the board.”
Over 90% of businesses in the retail, hospitality, and food and beverage (F&B) sectors plan “to make further investments in this area in 2022.”
2. Flexible customer journeys are the future of retail
As the lines between on- and offline life continue to blur, the advantages of delivering a unified shopping experience have “become evident to consumers and merchants alike.”
Customers have “taken to flexible, non-linear journeys like an octopus to water, with all eight legs reaching for a different touchpoint.”
The convenience of click-and-collect or curbside pickups cater to goal-oriented customers, “while brick-and-mortar experiences are still available to those that want a more immersive experience.”
Adyen found that 61% of consumers “think retailers should continue to deliver the same cross-channel flexibility after the pandemic.”
And if they don’t, “an even larger percentage of shoppers will drop off and not return when they’ve had a bad shopping experience, regardless of the platform.”
To deliver a consistent and streamlined customer journey across different platforms, “you need to connect the dots.”
That’s where unified commerce comes in. 42% of businesses “stated that a benefit of unified commerce has increased customer loyalty.”
3. Technology is key when building customer loyalty
Delivering a cohesive cross-channel experience “to your customers is only the beginning.”
Rather than solely focus on “enabling shoppers to buy across channels, you can maximize customer loyalty and make data-driven decisions if you feed payments from all your channels into the same system.”
You can “gain insights into customer segments and behavior in almost real time by keeping an eye on payment data.”
With these insights, you can “recognize returning customers, remember product and payment preferences, streamline checkout, make personalized offers, and provide rewards for repeat business.”
An area that “holds great promise is creating payment-linked loyalty programs that automatically recognize and reward return customers with personalized rewards.”
With the correct technological setup, you can “allow your customers to reap the benefits of loyalty programs automatically rather than work with outdated loyalty cards or other schemes.”
For more details on this update, check here.