Unify (v); to make or become united, uniform, or whole.
Unity (n); the state of being united or joined as a whole.
The theme behind this blog is simple enough; things always work better when they work as a whole. Using a food example; think about dining experiences at your favorite restaurant. Sure, there are more good days, and there are some bad days. More often than not, the food is great, and the service is too. Contrast the good days with the bad; the food might be mediocre (on the cold side, undercooked, overcooked), and the service is seemingly lacking.
Any number of reasons might contribute, but more often than not the bad days have something to do with the front of the house and the back of the house being out of sync, unable to unify in their efforts toward customer satisfaction. It’s as if the 2 groups are speaking different languages, moving at different speeds, and seeking different outcomes. Where’s the united front that made me love this restaurant in the first place?
Nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than in eCommerce. I’m sure you’ve also experienced ununified eCommerce at least once in your online life. Even if the purchase process on a website or app runs smoothly, acquiring the goods is an entirely different story. This is typically because the frontend and the backend of the experience aren’t matching up as they should. It’s 2021, time to leave this misstep in the past.
If it’s possible to say there was a silver lining at all to 2020, it’s how the pandemic acted as a global accelerator. On so many levels, it showed us our strengths, and equally as important, it showed us our weaknesses. In business, it threw practices roughly a decade into the future within the length of 1 solar year. The effects were felt throughout the spectrum from the one-person shop all the way to the mightiest of companies. If a business had only a store front, doing business was nearly impossible to continue. One rung up the ladder, if a business had an online presence, but no approach to backend fulfillment, the chaos was only slightly less. However, those businesses best positioned for the shutdown accompanying a global pandemic were those with a unified commerce business model already in place.
Unified commerce companies were able to continue operations for the most part, with slight adjustments, of course. Consumers were able to buy online, and choose their method of fulfillment, all as a seamless experience. This process is fluid due to frontend and backend cohesion. Data and information from all parties involved lines up, and with a unified commerce experience, the left hand knows what the right hand is doing so to speak, and vice-versa.
Consumers feel the unified commerce experience. There’s little to no friction, and this creates a happy and fulfilled customer. Compared to a bad customer experience with a less-than-unified experience; both the consumer and the business feel the negative effects of a bad experience. Marketing research indicates 12 positive experiences are needed to repair damage caused by 1 unresolved negative one. A daunting ratio for certain. The great news for businesses of all sizes? Microsoft has recently re-entered the eCommerce arena. This means a unified eCommerce platform is readily available, suited to the reality we’re living in today. More importantly, it’s making it easier to create the seamless customer experiences consumers are expecting.