Canadian Retailer - Spring 2014 - 23

Michael Chase: Depending on the
person you're speaking to, the term
omnichannel seems to elicit a different response nearly every time.
How do you and your organizations
define omnichannel retail?
James Connell: Your definition
of omnichannel needs to change
depending on your role within
your organization and the vertical
within which your business operates. Marketing or e-commerce or
operations should all have a very
different view of what omnichannel
means to their roles and again the
customer expectations would be
different if you are an apparel retailer, a quick service restaurant or a
pharmacy. Across the organization,
there should be multiple definitions
of what omnichannel really is and
differing strategies concerning the
ways to approach it. I don't believe
that there is any single definition
that fits the overall organization or
any market segment.

Jordan Versluis: In general, we want
to emulate the most crucial element
to retailing: the face-to-face customer
experience. If you're able to translate
the in-store experience for your customer online, they'll purchase online
and will also come back to your brick
and mortar. If you can't do that, the
customer becomes discouraged and
won't buy from you at all.
Paul Simmonds: As an independent retailer, we don't have the
resources that a lot of the larger retailers have. However, we're fortunate enough to be very nimble and
to be able to focus on the customer
experience every time one of our
customers enter the store. We look
at omnichannel as a way to enhance
and enrich that customer experience. So, we utilize a lot of in-store
pick-up with online purchases and
have put extensive resources into
our staff to ensure that the consumer can contact us in any form, from
whichever device they desire.

"Providing convenience is the best method for Canadian
retailers to win in the domestic marketplace. If you can
make your product available to purchase in-store and
online, return it in-store, offer free or reduced shipping, and
then provide excellent after-care support for the customer,
then you will have an incredible advantage over pure play
online retailers."
- JAMES CONNELL, Roots Canada
Peter Watanabe: We view omnichannel as a way to take the friction
out of the buying process and to
serve the customer the way they want
to be served-however, whenever
and wherever. At the end of the day
customers care about four things:
product assortment, competitive
pricing, quick availability and an easy
returns process. We focus on that
regardless of channel. The ultimate
test for omnichannel is ensuring that
a customer can seamlessly transition
between channels be it stores, online,
mobile, without knowing it.

Grace Carter: It's about creating a
consistent customer experience on
whatever platform they're using and
translating what makes the brickand-mortar store successful to the
online world. To do this, you have
to deliver a site that's a ten-out-often in both form and function and
marry content and commerce.
MC: Considering the fact that the
consumer is the focus of any given
retail operation, how are you creating
an amazing and seamless customer
experience in the omnichannel world?

Watanabe: One of our success stories is the growth of our Endless Aisle
program, which is designed to be a
win-win for both our online and store
channels. We are a destination retailer so most of our customers come
to our stores looking to buy something. The Endless Aisle program
opens up our entire 60K online sku
assortment to these customers. We
find the biggest factor in driving success is store associate engagement
and when they assist the customer
with the sale.
Connell: Providing convenience is
the best method for Canadian retailers to win in the domestic marketplace. If you can make your product
available to purchase in-store and
online, return it in-store, offer free
or reduced shipping, and then provide excellent after-care support for
the customer, then you will have an
incredible advantage over pure play
online retailers.
Carter: You need to get your consumer to connect to your brand as a
personality. We've done our best to
bring our content, art, culture and
music online and create a very personal connection, and to be totally
vertically integrated. We've created a state-of-the-art customer call
centre that works whether people
are calling based on their online experience or in store. We also do all of
our own catalogue photography inhouse to a really high standard. So,
we've done all of these extra things
to make sure that we are taking the
quality of our store and bringing it
online.
Versluis: One of the most important things that we're focused on is
actually ensuring that the frontline
experience in-store is a great one for
our customers. To do that, our staff
has to be able to leverage product
availability and assist customers instore to purchase online. In the end
it's going to be about getting the
tablets into the hands of the sales

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Canadian Retailer - Spring 2014

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