Transforming Customer Experience with Phygital – The Future of Shopping

A common success factor behind all big brands and companies is their ability to respond to changing consumer needs. Behind all that marketing and management jargon that you come across, the speed at which a brand adapts to the changing ecosystem driven by consumer demand defines the future roadmap for an organization. You can study thousands of case studies on what made a brand successful. The pace and efficiency with which any brand incorporates changing consumer behavior into its core strategy is a major contributor to its success.

This was evident when the internet took over a few decades ago. And, the trend was again in the spotlight as the pandemic hit industries across the globe.

Companies and brands that had the conviction, resources, and planning to take their business online were able to adapt much more quickly to the changing market ecosystem.

In fact, it would not be wrong to say that technological adoption laid the foundation for an enterprise’s success.

The past few years have seen a significant paradigm shift vis-à-vis how consumers engage with organizations. Most noticeably, the retail industry has seen a major transformation in the way consumers behave, shop, and interact with brands. The change started with the rise of the internet, followed by social media, and received a new meaning with the entry of new-age platforms that offer a better digital experience. While customer experience has been redefined over the past decade, its importance has only increased in recent years. A good customer experience in the digital space is all the more critical to the success of any consumer-facing brand.

Creating websites and maintaining an online presence became unavoidable for the retail industry as many started using the internet. However, the in-store experience continued to be better in customer satisfaction.

And so, to keep up with the changing customer preferences, digital transformation has indeed become the need of the hour. A digital transformation is not about creating a new e-commerce portal or signing up for a new marketplace.

It is the ability to create a phygital customer experience in which you can provide the best of both worlds – physical and digital. Technology is the binding factor that can create a truly phygital shopping experience. With the right technology partner, phygital can help brands to create a competitive advantage in today’s crowded marketplace.

Here is all you need to know about Phygital customer experience:

What is Phygital Customer Experience?

Phygital customer experience is a seamless introduction of technology in online and offline business operations. Integrating technologies like chatbots, artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality, and IoT enhances the customer experience by creating a more connected and interactive environment.  Phygital customer experience is expected to improve customer loyalty by providing a seamless experience across physical stores and digital channels.

What are the Advantages of Phygital Customer Experience?

There are several advantages of providing a phygital customer experience. Some key advantages are as follows:

Brand recognition and recall

A phygital shopping experience can help you build stronger brand recognition and recall among consumers. A virtual shopping experience will make online shopping seamless. And, the integration of technology in physical stores and other customer touchpoints will create a better customer experience. Customers who feel that they are heard provided answers, and are in a more intuitive ecosystem are more likely to become loyal to your brand over a period of time. This helps in increasing the customer’s lifetime value.

High conversion

A phygital commerce experience can deliver a higher conversion rate. As the interactions between a consumer and the brand improve, it will directly enhance the sales and profits of your business. In a phygital world, you can create a personalized experience for the consumer where you can recommend products based on the past information of the consumer. According to a report by McKinsey, personalization can increase revenue growth by 15% and marketing-spend efficiency by 30%. As a phygital experience provides a personalized experience with speed and convenience, it can translate into better sales and operational efficiency.

Best of both worlds

A phygital customer experience includes the best of both worlds – physical and digital. It can help your brand to adapt to the changing consumer expectations and become more agile in addressing customer needs. Infact, it plays an integral role in redefining your customer’s journey with your brand. You can merge physical advantages (like touch and feel of the product and a personalized experience) with digital advantages (like speed, convenience, and ease of accessibility) to create a superior phygital experience.

Better customer experience

Enhance Customer Experience with Real-Time Engagement and Product Demos through Phygital Alignment. This is one of the biggest advantages that a phygital shopping experience stands to offer. A phygital environment provides more flexibility to the consumer and simplifies their purchase journey. Moreover, it not only offers guided assistance to customers, but also facilitates their journey in discovering, interacting with and finally purchasing a product, all in one seamless experience.

Higher business efficiency

Expect higher business efficiency as you integrate Physical and Digital platforms. You can avoid situations like going out of stock and have accurate reporting along with unified inventory levels. This will directly translate into higher efficiency in business operations.

Start Your Phygital Journey

 It is easy to get started with your phygital journey. You can follow these steps to get started with your phygital experience journey:

1. Explore the current state of business operations across physical and digital retail
2. Understand the level of technological shift you want at this stage
3. Evaluate possible solutions available in the market to help you create a phygital brand store
4. Select the platform and vendor to manage both your online and offline stores
5. Start implementing the required changes using the platform to successfully translate your phygital plan into a reality

Phygital is emerging as the future of shopping, and several large brands have already taken steps toward a phygital future. It is expected that the growth curve from digital to phygital will be much faster than it was from offline to online. Innovative technologies and cutting-edge solutions will play a key role in boosting the growth of phygital retail and virtual commerce.

With an immersive brand experience along with the speed and convenience of online shopping, the phygital ecosystem can bring a new life into how customers interact with your brand. And, it is going to redefine shopping, now and in the future.