Have you super-sized your omnichannel experience? It might be time to. A McKinsey survey of 3,500 decision-makers in 12 markets found what customers want from omnichannel is “more” — more channels, more convenience and a more personalized experience. And if they don’t get what they’re looking for, they’ll take their business elsewhere.
If you don’t offer a consistent customer experience across channels, 72% of B2B buyers will actively look for a new supplier. And 74% of buyers will switch to your competitors if it’s not immediately clear which products are available online.
As customers increasingly lean toward remote and self-serve digital shopping, distributors must meet these needs – or someone else will. Venture capitalists are poised to steal market share; they poured $80 billion into marketplaces over the last year, according to Crunchbase.
You can’t remain stagnant in your omnichannel efforts. Customers won’t stay loyal for long; they’ll move on to whoever will meet their needs.
The good news is that technology like artificial intelligence (AI) can help you create the seamless digital experience your customers demand – personalized and consistent across every channel.
Why AI Matters for Sales Effectiveness
Most distributor channels are disconnected. Inside sales can’t see what customers were looking at online and customer service can’t see details from the last in-person sales visit. When the omnichannel infrastructure isn’t there, your customers get a disjointed experience. They struggle to find and buy what they need. And your sales team can’t access the right info to help them. Ultimately, sales decline. The McKinsey study found that for a customer to stay loyal to your business, they not only want a consistent experience across channels and product availability online but also the ability to purchase from any channel.
AI is critical to delivering this omnichannel experience. Plus, it makes a personalized buying journey possible for each customer. AI collects data from all your company’s systems, looks for patterns across the data set and then makes intelligent recommendations. It can sift through customer behavior, buying history and hundreds of thousands of SKUs to determine the best products to recommend each customer. It can also suggest add-on products commonly purchased together and help sales reps answer questions through a semantic search of product catalogs.
By connecting the dots between channels, AI makes your data useful. Your website and sales team can deliver an extraordinary customer experience when your data is useful. When customers can find and buy what they need – and enjoy interacting with your company – there’s no reason for them to leave.
What makes AI a unique technology? AI learns much like humans do by recognizing patterns or repeating behaviors. It sees a bunch of examples in a data set and then applies those patterns to new examples.
AI is exponential by design. The more data added to a system with AI at its core, the smarter it gets. Since distributors have tons of data and repetitive activity, AI applications can be very effective. With time and training, AI can outperform humans in determining what products a customer is most likely to buy.
AI gets exponentially more valuable with scale. This is why the sooner you start using the technology, the better. By using AI, distributors can grow sales and provide the personalized omnichannel experience customers expect. According to McKinsey, to win in the new omnichannel world, personalization is key. You need to know what your customers need and deliver the same experience no matter where they interact with you. Customers’ expectations are changing, and AI will help you win.
How AI Grows Revenue with Personalization
A personalized omnichannel approach is more effective than traditional sales models for more than 90% of companies surveyed by McKinsey. AI makes personalization at scale possible.
Although a B2C company, Amazon is on the cutting edge of what’s possible with personalization. But it didn’t happen overnight. Amazon launched its first personalization algorithm in 1999. Without the AI-powered suggestions you see on Amazon, finding what you’re looking for on the site would be impossible. This personalization improves the customer experience, but it’s also a huge lever for Amazon’s growth. AI-powered suggestions drive 35% of Amazon’s digital sales or about $69 billion annually in revenue.
Distributors can also use AI to deliver a personalized omnichannel experience and increase sales. For example, AI can help you grow sales from the inside sales team. One challenge an inside sales team faces is getting to know the customer. Without going on-site, the inside sales rep lacks visibility into what might need restocking.
AI can help with that. It can figure out what a customer needs by finding patterns in buying history, browsing activity, similar customer purchases and more to suggest relevant upsell and cross-sell recommendations for each customer to an inside sales rep. This same AI model can also help you deliver a personalized experience to your customers online, similar to how Amazon’s AI makes product suggestions to shoppers. Ultimately, this personalized experience can boost top-line sales by 10% or more.
While omnichannel is critical, you can only go so far without connecting your channels with AI. You will see customer information at every touchpoint with the right AI application. This comprehensive view of activity and customer data allows AI to make better recommendations based on relevant needs.
Get Started with AI
AI takes over manual data analysis to free up sales and customer service reps to spend more time doing what they do best – selling and building relationships with customers. AI adoption in your organization requires employee buy-in. These three key steps can help your company adopts an AI-supported digital solution:
#1. Align the “why” with your company’s users. The better you align the “why” for the tool to each team member’s role, the more success you’ll have. For example, a salesperson might be interested in seeing how an AI solution will increase their commissions. A customer service rep might be excited to see how the technology will make it easier to help customers.
#2. Think big and start small. When implementing new technology, think big. Consider how the technology will impact companywide revenue and how it can differentiate your company in the market. But, implementation is more effective when you start small. Train a few users first to ensure they are comfortable with new workflows and tools. Starting small is an effective strategy to build momentum before deploying the new technology on a larger scale.
#3. Set measurable targets. Define and set measurable metrics for success as you begin your AI implementation. Setting goals helps you identify areas for improvement and allows you to measure the effectiveness of your AI adoption. Align your key performance indicators (KPIs) across departments, communicate goals and use measurable results to track performance. Since this isn’t a “set it and forget it” process, you can use the data you gather to make adjustments and ensure your AI deployment’s success.
The only way to give customers a consistent, personalized experience on every channel is to use AI. It’s time to step into the digital future and super-size your omnichannel experience.
Benj Cohen grew up in his family’s distribution business, Benco Dental, a dental supply business started by his great-grandfather in the 1930s. He blended this background with a Harvard degree in applied math to found proton.ai (www.proton.ai), a company dedicated to bringing artificial intelligence to distribution companies and others in the B2B world to deliver large ROI. Cohen was the subject of a 2019 Electrical Wholesaling feature on AI, “The Art & Science of Artificial Intelligence.” You can contact him at [email protected].
