As the CTO at ATG, I joined forces with Kelly Phillipps, the CIO of Backcountry.com, to present a session called “Keeping Pace with the Evolving Cross-Channel Challenge” at the recent NRFtech 2010: IT Leadership Summit.

Kelly’s side of the presentation focused on building community through the various commerce channels offered by Backcountry.com (an ATG Commerce customer). In my introduction to this topic, I took the opportunity to outline some topics for merchants to consider as they attempt to implement an effective cross-channel commerce strategy. I’d like to continue that conversation here.

First and foremost, we need to define what an effective cross-channel commerce strategy entails, right?

We often hear people say “drop the ‘e’ from ‘e-commerce,” but that doesn’t mean that we suddenly forget about the Web. Rather, it means that we need to take advantage of the work we’ve already done to build that essential platform to add new channels, business models, and modes of connection that are integrated  to ensure that consumers’ needs are met at each level of interaction and that you have a unified view of the customer and his/her goal.

These data and processes should include a range of functionality from the most basic services to an array of external, SaaS-based technologies (such as ratings and reviews, product recommendations, or click-to-call) that can easily be delivered and managed. More importantly, they can be implemented on any channel, mode or business model that is desired, without risking service levels. This is what we call “Commerce Anywhere” and it means that consumers can access merchants’ information, conduct research, and make purchases anywhere, anytime and any way.

So where should you implement this strategy?

There are some obvious answers to this question, such as on the Web, on mobile devices, in the stores and within your call center. That said, there are many paths to a purchase and merchants need to put themselves in their customers’ shoes to determine the best solution to suit their consumers’ unique needs. If you were to purchase a product or service from your company, what path might you follow? Does it require thought, research, or consultation? Is there an aesthetic consideration for which you’d like advice? Should it be compared to other products or services? As a consumer, what path would you choose and what information would you need? It’s often the case that consumers interact with multiple touch points over the course of a buying journey, and these interactions may appear to be discrete and unconnected, while to the consumer they are all part of a single task. The idea is to first ensure that information is accurate and synchronized across the channels, but also to make it possible to become aware of these journeys happening around you and to react to them to help the consumer complete her task.

Once you have considered the information, services and touch points that will best suit your consumers’ needs, try to distinguish between the channel and the mode of communication. The term “channel” is often used for both, but I find this collides with its traditional business meaning, in a confusing way. What’s more, it is ambiguous.

After all, you may be standing in a store, while using your smartphone to look up information about an item in front of you, or calling or texting/chatting with a call center agent. You could also visit a store, but use a kiosk to find other items via the Web, or order on-line, but visit a store for pickup and to grab accessories. Therefore, we try to distinguish between channels, which usually have different business terms, relationships, and contracts associated with them, and modes, which have technical requirements and implementation details associated with them.

In summation, a “cross-channel” strategy is crucial, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. Merchants must consider their business needs – and the behaviors of their customers – to ascertain what information and services, and which channels and modes, are best suited for their commerce activities.

We were happy to see last week’s article in Direct Magazine about Urban Outfitters seeing second quarter sales jump 20 percent overall, thanks largely to a 28 percent increase in web traffic. The retailer of apparel and accessories, which has long used ATG Commerce Platform to power its web store, plans to increase its investment in technology and people to sustain this increase in direct sales, according to Glen T. Senk, CEO of Urban Outfitters.

What stood out to us were Senk’s comments on social commerce and the potential for social media to help facilitate a dialogue with their customers. “It’s not about broadcasting a message, it’s about having a discussion or allowing customers to have discussions with other customers. It’s something we look at on a regular basis,” Senk said, according to Direct.

Senk’s comments are right on target. Customers narrow their selection for products and services by connecting with their friends and family for advice through social networks, and as we head toward the holiday shopping season, merchants should think about how they can tap into this opportunity to listen to their customers, increase leads, convert more shoppers into buyers and increase customer retention.

Do you plan to beef up your sales strategy with a greater social media presence? Tell us about it.

If mobile commerce isn’t a part of your cross-channel retailing strategy, then you might want to reconsider.  A recent article in Mobile Commerce Daily reported that the mobile commerce market is worth $2.5 billion today, and will grow four times in the next couple of years. These are staggering figures, but what’s even more staggering is the opportunity you will miss out on if you don’t incorporate mobile into the mix.

Sometimes all of this mobile chatter can be a tad overwhelming, but there is one primary rule of thumb to keep in mind when adopting mobile commerce into your cross-channel retailing strategy:

Center your mCommerce strategy around building a mobile site optimized for the browser, and once this foundation is in place, you can consider building a device-based application (i.e. iPhone, Blackberry, Android) for your mobile store if the app offers added value and a unique experience for the consumer.

I recently had the opportunity to shed more light on this topic in an Ask the Expert Q&A on Internet Retailer. If you’re enduring a site-versus-app mental tennis match, then I’d encourage you to read on. As always, questions are welcome, so please, ask away!

I was visiting the local Au Bon Pain today in Kendall Square and noticed the associates, armed with iPads, busily running around to customers, taking orders and suggesting sides. Bravo – they’ve moved from their old (and not terribly environmentally conscious) system of the customer writing out their own order on paper and fighting their way through to give it to the silent sandwich makers.

That got me thinking (as I waited for that sandwich – and a side the associate recommended). Today, more than ever, customers are in charge. It’s truly time for merchants to face this – and embrace it. With near ubiquity of smart mobile devices, consumers today walk into stores armed and ready, using their mobile devices to make in-store purchase decisions. In their very own hands, they have online offers based on preferences, they have cross-store shopping lists fortified with peer review, they have online coupons, and they have a bevy of product information at their disposal.

And most likely, they are on the move, harried, and looking to get in and out.

How can stores cater to this uber-informed, time-deficit consumer and make their visit more enjoyable, valuable and service oriented? With roaming, smart POS devices that not only enable sales, but service as well. The notion of a consumer seeking out a stationary kiosk or a shopper hoping to catch the attention of that associate behind a counter – the one who’s already busy with customers – is one that is quickly becoming antiquated.

Today, merchants need to provide store associates with much more effective tools, given the sophistication of the consumers’ *own* devices and the opportunity to use mobile devices as a connector of cross-channel retail. And there has got to be leg work involved – ie, they need to roam! Through a mobile POS, give those busy consumers access to personalized shopper information to better up-sell, cross-sell and turn a common shopping experience into a remarkable one.

And it’s crucial to extend this notion of a traditional point of sales device – and make it a true point of service device. Enable it to check inventory availability. Make sure it can perform returns/refunds. Be sure it can handle loyalty program redemption, and that it can activate gift cards, etc. You get the point.

Your customers certainly are armed and ready – are you?

The countdown to the holidays is on, and according to a recent Internet Retailer article and the latest cross-channel benchmark study from Retail Systems Research (RSR), there are several cross-channel shopping trends and recommendations to consider as you create your holiday e-commerce strategy. Below are three key considerations we pulled from these sources that will be helpful as you iron out your holiday season checklist:

1. Cross-channel consumer profitability – As technology evolves and more consumers embrace social and mobile commerce platforms, retailers are seeing a greater number of cross-channel consumers. Consumers are realizing that using multiple channels to make a purchase is more profitable. According to RSR’s study, 65 percent of merchants say consumers who shop across multiple channels are more profitable than single-channel consumers – and that’s up from 56 percent a year ago. This trend further proves the point that retailers need to go where there consumers are.
2. Mobile commerce – Every retailer knows they need a mobile commerce plan, but what comes first, a mobile site or an app? The foundation of your mobile commerce strategy should be building a mobile site optimized for the browser, and then once this foundation is in place, you can consider building a device-based application for your mobile store if the app offers added value and a unique experience for the consumer. During the frantic holiday season, consumers are turning to their mobile device to research – and purchase – products. If a consumer can’t find your brand on their mobile browser, you most likely just missed out on a sale.
3. Inventory sharing across channels – Consumers dread getting an email stating the products they purchased are on back order. Retailers can prevent this scenario and increase customer satisfaction by sharing inventory across platforms. Of the retailers polled in RSR’s study, only 54 percent allow inventory allocated for one channel to be used for another channel’s fulfillment. This trend is on the rise – up from 43 percent a year ago – but more retailers need to be aware that their cross-channel strategy includes order fulfillment as well.

Keep these three considerations in mind as you map out your holiday e-commerce strategy. Also note that with the holidays come extremely bad weather – Snowmageddon of 2009 anyone? – and when consumers can’t shop in your brick-and mortar stores, they will turn to your online, mobile and social sites to make purchases.

On this coming Wednesday, August 4, ATG’s own Kelly O’Neill will be joined by Nikki Baird of Retail Systems Research for a webinar titled, “The Cross-Channel Wake-Up Call.” The event will cover the key findings from a study RSR just released, which finds that consumer demand is forcing additional investment in cross-channel capabilities among retailers. While we hope you will register for and attend the discussion, we also wanted to sit down with Nikki in advance of the webinar and share some of her thoughts on the survey and the topics that will be covered in more detail during the event.

ATG: Our own research has shown that consumers are increasingly mulling their purchases across multiple channels, and long for a consistent, cross-channel experience. Your survey essentially examined the retailers’ side of that topic, and took a look at whether retailers are making the right investments to address these behaviors. What stood out?

Nikki Baird: From the get-go, it’s apparent that retailers that are not thinking in terms of cross‐channel strategy, or making the right investments to back that up, are not only neglecting to take advantage of sales opportunities, but they are in a lot of ways actively encouraging customers to turn to those other retailers that better accommodate how they want to engage in the shopping process. What was really interesting for us to see, is that the retailers we described as “winners” have actually been sitting on the sidelines to some degree. These retailers, those better performing overall, are taking a more cautious approach to investing in cross-channel tools and technologies, and instead it is the “laggards” who are a step ahead in terms of investing in the latest cross-channel tools and technologies .

ATG: Why do you think that is?

Nikki Baird: Well, the sense we got is that the winners are looking at the bigger picture, and they’re afraid to make the wrong investments to make any moves too quickly. A lot of their challenges and obstacles come from internal business processes, and so before they are ready to invest in new technologies, they are examining inefficiencies or resource limitations and figuring out how best they can move forward. On the flip side, the laggards, or lesser performing companies, really rely on technology to force process changes and catch up to other players in their markets, so they are more keen on investing more and earlier, to unify their view of their customers and try to meet those cross-channel demands. However, because the winners aren’t investing as much as the laggards now does not imply that they won’t. On the contrary, winners plan to invest in cross-channel commerce a lot more over the next 1-2 years than their peers. They are, in essence, observing the moves others are making, looking at how they can improve internal processes, and then making big investments to maintain their leadership position down the line.

ATG: What kinds of cross-channel technologies are they ultimately investing in?

Nikki Baird: Most are looking at full platforms that enable them to unify marketing and promotions across channels. Retailers are looking to ensure that they can use what they know about their customers online, offline, and in emerging channels, to meet their expectations (or exceed them) and drive sales. We also took a look at whether they are investing in mobile and social technologies, and perhaps unsurprisingly, mobile presented the most opportunity for more traditional, store-based retailers who are looking to blend online with offline. Mobile shopping sites and applications allow them to link those two experiences, so there’s a lot of interest and need there. Most store-based retailers are looking to see how social shopping develops and matures before they jump in. But there is definitely a lot of interest among these companies, in single platforms that enable them to deliver all of these capabilities and evolve over time. A huge majority of the companies participating in our study recognized the need to converge their e-commerce and POS systems onto a single platform.

To hear more about RSR’s new study, and the challenges and opportunities of cross-channel commerce, please join us on Wednesday at 1:00 pm ET. To register for the event, click here.

By George Richeson

Editor’s note: George Richeson is the owner and CEO of eMediaNode, a medical and dental interactive marketing agency, and has over 10 years of experience in the interactive marketing realm.

As interactive marketers, an integral part of our business is measuring and monitoring online conversions. We can gauge the effectiveness of a pay-per-click campaign, track SEO and analyze the overall performance of a website – but what about tracking offline activity, which is still a very important part of overall lead generation?

At our agency, we had realized we were missing the offline piece to our marketing measurement strategy and weren’t looking at the cross-channel influence of offline marketing to our overall marketing performance, especially as we know that offline activities drive online traffic. We had no way of knowing how many calls were generated from our online websites and promotions, and couldn’t track offline conversions. Our clients relied on their receptionists to determine how a patient found out about their business, and we realized this anecdotal evidence was not being collected consistently, so wasn’t an effective measure. In fact, after we conducted detailed analytics, we learned that our clients were missing out on as much as 50 percent of web leads because we, and they, weren’t effectively tracking their phone calls.

We decided to try deploying call tracking on our customers’ websites. Call tracking is an on-demand technology that monitors and measures inbound phone calls from any source – print or online advertising, websites, email campaigns, or other promotional campaigns.

Call tracking has really helped us fill the measurement gap and prove the effectiveness of marketing activities for our clients. It gave us objective-based data on the performance and ROI of our site development and promotion strategies. It gave our clients complete documentation of who called, the date and duration of the call, and other valuable pieces of information so they could prevent leads from ending up in the “offline” black hole. Our clients are also able to leverage the information obtained in these phone calls to enhance staff productivity and message effectiveness while on the phone with customers. Now, we have one more way to prove the value of our activities on our clients’ behalf, which is very valuable when it’s time to review and renew contracts.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments, and even experiences in using call tracking in your business. Have you found that you or your clients are missing web leads because you haven’t found an effective way to track offline lead activity? How have you solved this challenge in your business?

You monitor conversion and retention rates on a daily basis, and like most, you’re looking for a way to optimize these key performance metrics to attract more advertisers. This is no easy task, but Trader Media, the company that charges the CycleTrader.com and BoatTrader.com websites, has discovered an innovative, effective solution for making this happen.

On Tuesday, July 27, at 1 p.m. EST, join ATG and Trader Media for the webinar, “Three Steps to Attract Advertisers, Decrease Costs, and Prove Value; A Case Study with Trader Media,” and learn how Trader Media leveraged ATG Lead Performance and ATG Live Help solutions to convert and retain more advertisers, grow revenue, and increase profits.

The webinar will highlight:

• How to increase leads and prove your value to advertisers using Call Tracking and Click to Call
• Best practices to improve advertiser retention and up-sell using Email Response and Click to Chat
• Tips to improve service efficiency by enabling distributed service agents to handle calls, emails and chats from remote locations

Analyst BIA/Kelsey, a resource to the media, mobile advertising, telecommunications, Yellow Pages and electronic directory markets, will also be in attendance to reveal the current investments and future trends of the industry.

Register today for this free webinar.

There’s no doubt about it. American Express (AMEX) is an outstanding leader in customer service and customer relationship management (CRM).

Just last month, the company, which is an ATG Live Help customer, was named a winner of the coveted 2010 Forrester Research Voice Of The Customer Awards. Harley Manning, vice president and research director of Forrester Research, said, “The quality of this year’s nominees is evidence that voice of the customer programs are advancing rapidly … The best VoC programs demonstrate that executive involvement, measurement, and insights that are tied directly to action are critical to customer experience success.”

In addition, AMEX today unveiled the results of its American Express Global Customer Service Barometer. The study surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers in April and its findings were just shared in 1to1 Media’s “Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog.”

Here are some of the highlights:

• 28 percent of respondents said that companies are now paying less attention to good service, even though 61 percent of those consumers said quality customer service is more important to them than ever
• 91 percent of Americans consider the level of customer service important when deciding to do business with a company
• The three most influential factors that help consumers decide which companies they do business with include personal service (98 percent), a company’s reputation or brand (92 percent), and recommendations from family and friends (88 percent)
• 81 percent have decided never to do business again with a company because of poor service

Jim Bush, executive vice president of world service at American Express, said, “Many consumers say companies haven’t done enough to improve their approach to service in this economy, and yet it’s clear they’re willing to spend more with those that deliver excellent service, suggesting substantial growth opportunities for businesses that get customer service right.”

We couldn’t agree more, Mr. Bush. Congrats to you and your team on receiving one of this year’s Voice Of The Customer Awards and thank you for sharing the results of this insightful study!

With the proliferation of smart phone usage, more and more consumers are using their mobile devices to browse product and pricing information to inform in-store purchase decisions – while they’re standing in the aisles.

According to new research from eMarketer, smart phones are enhancing consumers’ in-store shopping experiences by giving them a vehicle to price compare with other nearby retailers, scout out online discounts, and read product reviews, among other activities.

We all have faced the mental “I wonder if” trivia game when shopping in-store: “I wonder if this shirt comes in a different color,” “I wonder if there is a coupon for this retailer,” or “I wonder if this product has gotten good reviews.”

Mobile in-store shopping provides immediate answers to the “I wonder ifs” and can instantaneously influence purchase decisions.

When developing your cross-channel strategy, think broadly and incorporate in-store mobile marketing into the mix. Remember, each shopping channel isn’t siloed. Customers are integrating them and using them all to assist their buying process.