Omnichannel has been a buzzword in the retail space for a few years now. Every retailer has an omnichannel strategy and it is announced as a priority to the board and shareholders (if the company is public). The reality is that most of this is platitudes – important to emphasize, but hard to deliver on.

Key challenges retailers face include:

• Offering the same product across channels (or as much overlap as possible)
• Allowing consumers to shop across channels (buy online and pickup in store or vice-versa)
• Tracking customer behavior across channels and interactions with your brand (knowing that Customer A shopping in the store is the same Customer A when she shops online)

Practically all these challenges existed due to structural issues long before omnichannel or multichannel was “a thing”:

• Decoupled inventory – by store (what’s on the floor vs. what’s in the back room), by Distribution Center often with online and the stores having separate warehouses
• Separate buying and planning teams for online/offline
• Separate systems

Anytime I speak to a retailer who says they’re investing in omnichannel capabilities, but they still have separate inventory management, separate buying teams, and separate systems, I don’t believe them.

Now that we’ve discussed the challenges, let’s talk about the reality from a customer perspective. I very rarely have a positive omnichannel experience with a retailer. Three experiences come to mind and only one of them was truly magical:

Electronic receipts. The first time I witnessed this was sometime in late 2011 or early 2012 at Urban Outfitters in NYC. After checking out, the cashier asked me whether I’d like my receipt emailed to me and I said sure! My initial reaction was “Cool. Retailers are going paperless.” Then we got to the not so fun part. The cashier asks me, “What is your email address?” Ugh… I found myself spelling out a long drawn out email that includes my FULL first name (9 letters), my middle name (5 letters) and my last name (6 letters). It was painfully slow and I worried that my T’s were confused for D’s. In theory, I’d rather have a paperless receipt, but announcing my email address added a lot of time to my checkout process, probably 60+ seconds. And when you have 3 other people in line, that starts to matter.

For Urban Outfitters, the benefit of electronic receipts is that it could potentially link a customer’s behavior online and offline through their email address. Unfortunately, the current in-store execution has a negative impact on checkout times and likely outweighs any benefit the linkage would have created. In this example, UO is basically trading off a company benefit (better customer data) for a small negative impact to the customer experience (slower checkout time). Fast forward to out of stock example below for a potentially smarter way they could have done this.

Return in store. Gap Inc. (Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, Piperlime, etc.) is probably the apparel retailer that convinced me to shift the majority of my purchases online. I loved the free shipping and easy returns. And as someone who wears extended sizes – super tall / long for any pants, skirts, etc – I can’t even buy the sizes I want in store. Because I’ve replaced store visits to Gap Inc. stores with online visits, I frequently use free shipping & returns to try on a number of items (multiple colors, sizes, etc.) knowing that I won’t keep all of it and that some of it I won’t like. I happen to live 1 block from a Gap store and a Banana Republic store, so I appreciate the fact that Gap Inc. accepts online returns via USPS/UPS or in-store.

Out of stock (OOS) in store. Two weeks ago I was shopping at Nordstrom in the Mall of America and found a pair of shoes that I loved. The color I liked was out of stock in store, so I asked the sales associate whether they could ship them to me. The associate said “Of course. What is your phone number?” I gave him my cell phone and he said “Is your shipping address in NYC?” I said yes and confirmed my address that was already listed in his system. Why is this so magical? Because I have never provided this address in store before! Or my cell phone number! Both of those data points were accessed via my customer profile that had been created on Nordstrom.com.

Not only did Nordstrom create a system that allowed store associates to seamlessly access customer contact information across channels but they were smart enough to ask me for my phone # (short, easy to pronounce & understand, and easier to type) rather than my email address. And of course they offered free shipping too.

Later, when I returned home to NYC, I anxiously awaited my package to discover where my item was shipped from. Was it from a central DC or from a store? The shoes arrived 5 days later and they appeared to have been shipped from a store. It appears they’re doing some pretty innovative things with inventory management and fulfillment as well.

To date this is the ONLY retail experience I’ve ever had where I’ve though wow, now that’s truly an omnichannel experience. Go Nordstrom!