The Ultimate Guide to
Omnichannel Retail Strategies and Solutions for Telecom
In today’s digital age, shoppers demand a unified omnichannel experience across all your retail channels — one that offers flexibility, continuity, and consistency no matter where they are.
Customers expect retailers to meet them in their chosen channel or platform, to personalize their offerings, to offer a seamless purchasing, fulfillment, and returns flow throughout different channels, and to create the same immaculate brand experience at every touchpoint and stage.
For a retail sector that is mired in legacy systems and a range of technological challenges, achieving all of that is no small feat. And without a robust omnichannel technology solution at the core of your business, this kind of unified commerce just isn’t possible.
Here, we offer The Ultimate Guide to Omnichannel Strategies and Solutions for Telecom Retail, bringing together our most current and relevant industry insight, thought leadership, and solutions pages all in one place. Bookmark this page for a one and done!
First, the basics.
What is
Omnichannel Retail?
Omnichannel retail is the ability to connect with and sell to retail customers across multiple channels in a consistent and unified way. And it can mean a lot of things but, for telecom retailers, it means staying competitive in the future of the industry. For customers, it means enjoying a seamless purchasing, fulfillment, and returns flow across multiple retail touchpoints — whether that’s online, in-store, on social media, or anywhere else. Since the COVID era, this type of shopping has become expected by increasingly demanding consumers. For retailers, now more than ever, omnichannel has become essential.
In a global Omnichannel trends research report by digital consultancy and research group Kin + Carta, 66% of consumers across the US and UK have spent more time and/or money because of an immersive experience. Conversely, 44% of respondents said they have stopped shopping with a retailer because of digital channel frustration.
Other research has shown:
Some practical examples of omnichannel retail include:
- buying or reserving a product online and picking up the item in the store of your choice (also known as BOPIS/ROPIS),
- curbside pick-up,
- buying online, getting home delivery, and returning the item to a store,
- booking store appointments online,
- virtual store Queue Management,
- offering in-store customers a choice of unstocked products from an online catalog with the option to ship to home (Endless Aisle and Dropship), and
- nearby retail stores appearing in customers’ online search results for specific products (Local Inventory).
These strategies all apply to wireless retail, with BOPIS being the most frequently implemented.
What is Unified Commerce
(and is it different from Omnichannel)?
Unified Commerce is a phrase that often used to describe the “next level” of omnichannel. This might be where you have all the multi-channel integrations that enables a customer’s omnichannel journey, while also using a 360-degree view of the customer, using data and analytics, to enhance that customer experience. This could be through product personalization, promotions based on previous buying patterns, or other such insights.
How does Unified Commerce differ from Omnichannel?
- Unified Commerce unifies back-end systems; brings all data into a single centralized platform
- It interconnects all systems and software, customer touchpoints, and data so that the customer has the same consistent, personalized experience regardless of the channel they choose
- Whereas Omnichannel focuses on the front-end experience; i.e. sales channels communicating with each other
When layered in with Omnichannel strategies, Unified Commerce could be broken down into three strategies:
- Bringing all relevant data from your functional business areas together within a single repository, creating a single version of the truth.
- Mining that data for consumer insights and business opportunities using advanced analytics and/or AI analytical tools.
- Using these results, present the right items, offers, and services to each customer at each moment of an interaction. This not only allows you to keep products in view of the customer, it ensures that each product and promotion shown is actually of interest to that customer.
As a practical example, this might be where a customer’s regular wireless retail brand texts them with personalized promotions tailored to their choice of device or current rate plan. Engaging with this text could then send the customer into an omnichannel purchasing flow for that product, or an invitation to book a time in-store for a consultation.
As advanced technologies such as AI and augmented reality become increasingly ingrained into retail, this data can be used in new ways as part of the omnichannel experience. For example, interactive store shelves — which display product information on demand — can identify products to the customer that fit their specific needs, such as an accessory that matches the device the customer is in-store to pick up. And AI can parse huge amounts of data to create entirely personalized retail relationships between a telecom brand and every one of its customers.
What is Interconnected Commerce (and is it different from Unified Commerce)?
It’s worth taking a sidebar here to explain how iQmetrix Interconnected Commerce differs from the more general Unified Commerce, given that they may sound quite similar. Whereas Unified Commerce is a general retail concept that is supported by many technologies, Interconnected Commerce is a category of technology solutions.
iQmetrix’s suite of Interconnected Commerce solutions is a complete set of technologies that are modular, flexible, wireless-specific, and seamlessly connect disparate systems. In combination with our ecosystem of integrated partners, Interconnected Commerce is a streamlined tech stack designed to carry the complexities and weight of telecom retail so all carriers, OEMs, retailers, and sales associates can have frictionless and uplifting experiences — ultimately creating one for your customers.
Telecom is interconnected. Whether your business is a carrier, a retailer, or a device manufacturer, the entire sector is inextricably interlinked. iQmetrix’s solutions take companies across the industry from multiple legacy systems, a one-to-one integration approach, and disconnected customer experiences to flexible, modular commerce solutions that are interconnected, allowing for a one-to-many and many-to-many integration approach.
All of which means that a telecom retailer’s Omnichannel and Unified Commerce strategies are powered by Interconnected Commerce solutions — which also do much more besides!
Read more on our blog post: Interconnected Commerce and What it Means for Your Telecom Retail Business.
What are BOPIS, ROPIS, BORIS, and BOPA?
Now that we have all the bigger definitions pinned down, let’s take a closer look at some of the most established purchasing and fulfillment flows in any given omnichannel strategy. There are a lot of acronyms used in the space, and it’s worth setting those out before we start.
BOPIS—Buy Online, Pick up In-Store
This concept as simple as it sounds — a customer buys a product from an e-commerce channel online, and picks it up at the store of their choice. Given that the customer will have already paid for the product online, this is where Curbside Pickup can be added for extra convenience.
ROPIS—Reserve Online, Pick up In-Store
As above, only the customer merely reserves the product to pick up and pay for in store, as opposed to paying in the online flow.
BORIS—Buy Online, Return In-Store
The customer buys the product and receives it at their home, but wants to return or exchange it, so they can do this in the store of their choice (saving them from having to mail it back to the retailer).
BOPA—Buy Online, Pick up Anywhere
This newer phrase is an extension of BOPIS, but rather than picking up the product in-store, the customer has additional choices of where to pick up — such as parcel lockers, for example.
While these purchasing and fulfillment flows may seem simple in today’s retail vernacular, the behind-the-scenes technology required can be much less simple — especially in the complex vertical of telecom retail.
For example, in the case of BOPIS, it is very common for the customer to buy or reserve a product from a corporate-operated website and pick it up or return it at an authorized-retailer-run store operating on a different system. There may also be contractual hurdles that restrict a carrier from seeing inventory at their retailer’s stores, creating a major challenge for the carrier operating the corporate website and wanting to offer a BOPIS option (as in the case study below). See the next section for more on the technology needed to support these flows.
What Solutions Do You Need for Seamless Omnichannel/Unified Commerce Flows?
Omnichannel and Unified Commerce experiences must be supported by a full-suite of advanced, wireless-specific technology solutions such as iQmetrix Interconnected Commerce.
As mentioned above, some of the technological solutions to creating omnichannel flows can be quite challenging, especially when it comes to linking disparate systems from various players. The solution is to use a single, end-to-end technology suite that connects all those systems.
For example, when it comes to BOPIS/ROPIS/BORIS, in order to make these complex flows easy and invisibly seamless for the customer, they must be supported by technology that has deep integrations with the carrier, the authorized retail channel, and the device manufacturer.
Further integrations with additional platforms, vendors, and supply-chain partners are also required to support other omnichannel elements, such as Local Inventory, Dropship, and a range of customizable marketing services.
Added to that, a true Unified Commerce strategy must use robust data and analytics, along with an efficient Customer Relationship Management system, to create a personalized and targeted retail experience.
There can be many technology challenges faced when upgrading a legacy system to one that is omnichannel-enabled. Efficiently and cost-effectively integrating multiple solutions and siloed databases — and making sure systems work together optimally — is one of the biggest issues that telecom retailers’ IT and operations departments face.
Fortunately, iQmetrix’s Interconnected Commerce solutions are designed to tackle exactly these challenges. What’s more, within that suite of solutions, the iQmetrix Omnichannel suite has won multiple awards for its innovation and ability to help telecom brands go through their digital transformation, enabling the optimal customer experience.
