Unified Commerce

The business models of e-commerce and stationary retail can no longer be viewed separately. Both single-channel and multi-channel models are things of the past. Accordingly, omnichannel has created a cross-channel shopping experience in recent years and fundamentally changed the customer journey.

However, the customer experience isn’t consistent across every channel since the individual channels use solutions that either don’t interact with each other at all or only interact with each other to a limited extent. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that omnichannel is no longer the future, as modern customers move fluidly between channels and have no patience for interruptions in the system.

That’s why unified commerce is the buzzword of the moment, which puts the customer at the centre of everything.

Unified commerce is by its very definition the next evolutionary stage of omnichannel strategy, removing the inconsistencies created by cross-channel approaches. The unified commerce strategy manages the customer experience across every physical and digital touchpoint by integrating communication channels on to a single platform. As a result, customers are offered a personalised experience in real time, even if they change channels.

This new strategy even allows you to improve conversion rates, order values and customer loyalty. Market research company Gartner assumes that using unified commerce can increase a company’s sales by at least 20 per cent by 2025. The holistic overview of the customer journey across every channel is critically important to this.

In a unified commerce strategy, customers are at the centre of everything and can receive targeted communication at any time. This individualisation is achieved through the automated collection, categorisation and consolidation of the relevant data. A key benefit of this is the long-term, positive customer relationship.

The benefits of a unified commerce strategy compared to the omnichannel strategy are:

• Data on the entire customer journey is recorded in a central customer data platform (CDP).
• The CDP can then be segmented in an infinite number of ways to create personalised marketing campaigns.
• The data recorded from the different touchpoints provides new comprehensive KPIs.
• Providing a better service increases customer loyalty.

In a unified commerce strategy, the target groups are addressed from all sides according to customer needs and at logical intervals. This results in the customer being able to build a stronger connection and greater sense of loyalty to the brand.

A seamless customer experience needs the technologies involved to interact with one another. If you are to successfully provide this type of unparalleled customer experience in line with the unified commerce strategy, you need to merge all of your data into one platform. Salesforce Customer 360 provides a centralised view of every customer, making Salesforce the ideal application for shaping a unified commerce strategy.

Integrating artificial intelligence also makes a significant contribution to optimising the customer experience. With Einstein, Salesforce offers the only e-commerce solution where AI is already integrated into the platform. Einstein delivers product recommendations, customised product sorting and meaningful search results at every touchpoint.