In February, Jeff spoke about our product principles for 2023 – simple, configurable, iterative. Those principles permeate throughout our organization, putting us on the front foot of innovation and design with our clients’ needs in mind. In a world where the fight for consumer attention is fiercely competitive, creating new and innovative ways to drive customer engagement and loyalty is a significant driver of growth.
With that in mind, we are developing new ways to help our clients interact with customers, helping brands create enhanced experiences while also delivering more value to consumer. As these interactions become increasingly digitized and app-based, we are uncovering new opportunities for retailers to engage with their customers by offer more personalization and always-on shopping experiences.
At the core of our ability to deliver enhanced experiences is our service orchestration layer, which has become a critical component of the Carat global commerce platform because of the flexibility it provides our clients. Currently configured to enable a number of preset transactional experiences – such as “Order Ahead” and “Buy Online Pick Up in Store” – we have been busy adding an enhanced suite of commerce services, which brands can configure to create sticky, engaging customer experiences that drive loyalty, profitability, and growth. Here are some of the innovative commerce services we’re beginning to turn on for our clients:
Delivery optimization
In today's market, we know brands must exceed customer expectations to drive loyalty. We've created a configurable solution that enables operational excellence for the brands that rely on delivery service providers to move meals, grocers or retail goods to their customers. This capability gives our clients complete control to select the best third-party delivery provider at the time of the transaction based on rules set by the business, which can dynamically account for delivery times for each provider, cost for the business, and customer preferences for prioritizing fees vs. speed of delivery.
Integrating Delivery Optimization into a business’s existing ecommerce infrastructure allows them to bring the delivery experience back within their own consumer-facing apps, enabling the merchant to retain more control throughout the customer journey. Additionally, the solution optimizes multi-party settlement across delivery’s complex value chain of franchises, merchants, delivery providers, and other services – allowing businesses to get paid faster and reduce risk factors.
Data informing personalization
Our clients are often challenged with providing specific, personal, and strategic experiences to their customers. We are relentlessly helping our clients enhance engagement with their customers during the shopping journey. Leveraging robust sets of payments data, our data-driven personalization solution enables clients to deliver real-time personalization experiences that drive brand loyalty. This can include helping a brand understand which loyal customers are not part of their loyalty programs, or curating tailored recommendations that account for purchasing history.
Digital wallet services
We all know customers expect seamless shopping experiences across multiple channels. However, truly integrating the digital ecosystem with the in-store environment is a complex process. Our new Digital Wallet Service creates a centralized digital location for customers to store earned rewards, receive private label offers, and keep their preferred payment information. The system is configurable for each merchant to determine the mix of items within the wallet and this can, of course, continue to grow over time. The solution extends the value of retail-branded digital wallets, moving the wallet from a payment source to a dynamic financial hub that accessible when shopping online or in-store.
These are just a few examples. Much of our innovation happens when we ideate with our clients about the relationships they want to have with their customers. Rather than building each solution from scratch, we have found that ensuring configurability and a modular approach creates the most flexible and scalable solution with simpler maintenance and ultimately the lowest cost of ownership.
We're grateful for the innovative and imaginative partners we have and look forward to ideating the future of their customer relationships with them.
To learn more, contact a Carat expert today.
