When asked about their ability to deliver a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels, only 10% of the respondents in the e-tailing group’s 2011 Merchant Survey were confident that they could do so for their customers. Meanwhile, 46% of retailers are planning to implement programs that promote a seamless cross-channel experience by the end of 2012. Here are some more interesting trends that the survey indicates:

Alignment with the business teams: When asked what part of their business operations were in total sync across multiple channels of sale, 74% of them said “branding”. (Maybe they’ve read our white paper on branding during the order fulfillment process?). Only 45% agreedthat merchandising was consistently deployed across channels.

Customer contact: The preferred way for customers to contact their favorite internet retailer is still via email (58%), with 20% opting for live chat and 21% preferring to pick up the phone. However, some merchants indicated that their live chat was showing higher ROI than their traditional contact center  - and it shows, as between 25-40% of their customers said that they would have left the site if a chat box had not popped up when they had questions.

Top strategy for marketing and customer retention:  When asked to rate various tactics to increase marketing reach and customer service, online retailers rated search engine marketing (90%) as their most important strategy, followed by exemplary customer service and web analytics (88%). At the bottom of the list? Proactive chat (that ever-important little pop-up box) at 30%.

Testing: Online retailers swear by testing, and confirm that it has had great impact in user experience (61%) and site conversion (57%).

So what does all this mean? Well, the simple answer is that multichannel retail is hard. Whether your primary channel is ecommerce, catalog, direct response TV, or something else, being able to pull off all of these channels under one cohesive brand experience can be tricky. It involves planning promotional strategies that make sense across all channels, providing a shopping platform that can store order history and customer service information, and developing operational processes that can support sales and shipping from multiple channels. At the end of the day, a single-source ecommerce partner like Fifth Gear can help make that a reality.

Tags: catalogs, customer contact center, customer experience, customer service, Ecommerce, multichannel retail, order fulfillment, outsourced ecommerce services, single-source provider