Consumers increasingly expect omnichannel experiences when they interact with retail brands. According to McKinsey, B2B customers regularly use 10 or more channels to interact with suppliers (up from just 5 channels in 2016). To meet their expectations, leading brands must create a seamless customer experience across all of their channels. This means customers should be able to start a shopping experience on one channel, and then easily and quickly continue it on another—whether it’s in-store, online, or through a mobile app.
Companies must harness the wealth of data available to deliver seamless customer experiences. According to McKinsey: “Today, companies can regularly, lawfully, and seamlessly collect smartphone and interaction data from across their customer, financial, and operations systems, yielding deep insights about their customers. Those with an eye toward the future are boosting their data and analytics capabilities and harnessing predictive insights to connect more closely with their customers, anticipate behaviors, and identify CX issues and opportunities in real time.”
To yield these deep insights, retailers need to enhance their Customer 360—the practice of obtaining a holistic, timely view of customers from multiple data sources. These sources include online transactions, posts on social media and online forums, in-store purchases, customer service calls, and partner and third-party interactions.
The Snowflake Retail Data Cloud collects and unifies Customer 360 data points—structured, semi-structured, and unstructured—into an easy-to-query modern data environment that integrates with leading marketing, customer experience, business intelligence, machine learning, and data management tools. With insights gleaned from this holistic view, companies can create omnichannel customer experiences that frequently result in increased loyalty and repeat purchases.
Here’s how a few of our retail customers are using Snowflake to deliver seamless omnichannel experiences in their organizations:
Petco
Realizing the need for a modern data environment, Petco turned to Snowflake. Snowflake’s multi-cluster shared data architecture scales instantly to eliminate resource contention. Flexible capacity scaling provides a convenient solution to Petco’s cyclical reporting challenges.
Modernizing Petco’s data environment with Snowflake had an immediate impact on operations. Business teams now use data from Snowflake to understand and influence customer behavior across Petco’s stores, mobile app, and website. Data visualizations, enabled by Snowflake, provide the company with 360-degree customer views that guide decision-making about personalized service offers, promotional campaigns, and other revenue-generating programs. The near-instant elasticity of Snowflake’s compute aligns with Petco’s cyclical reporting needs without incurring unused compute costs.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc., has evolved over the years to become a dynamic ecommerce platform featuring more than a dozen gifting and sharing brands, including PersonalizationMall.com, Harry & David, Cheryl’s Cookies, and more.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM takes personalization to the next level with its robust gifting options. Customers can express themselves directly by filling out messages or cards that can be sent along with their gifts. On the back end, this process involves harnessing a large amount of available data and personalizing it through multiple mediums including mobile devices, desktops, chat messages, or the call center. Snowflake enables all of those channels to be fulfilled with the right data, at the right time, and in the proper context.
Mod Pizza
In March 2020, the pandemic changed everything for MOD Pizza. Overnight, the business had to cut costs and radically transform from an in-person destination to a digital-first company. Company leaders had just decided to make major investments in their data stack. Snowflake and Tableau enabled them to change store layouts and processes so they could offer digital ordering, curbside pickup, and mobile delivery. They changed their menu to promote family packs across digital channels—a big shift from their prior strategy of maximizing individual orders. They were also able to support employees through rapid sharing of COVID-19 exposure information and self-serve access to next steps.
To discover how you can deliver seamless omnichannel experiences with Snowflake:
