Feature
The Gist
- Blending worlds. Hybrid CX unifies physical and digital touchpoints, enhancing customer convenience.
- Tech connection. Brands use technology to merge online and in-store experiences, meeting modern consumer expectations.
- Avoiding confusion. Inconsistent experiences across channels cause mistrust, emphasizing the need for cohesive hybrid CX strategies.
The customer experience now encompasses the physical and digital environments interchangeably, but many brands' online and offline customer experience (CX) strategies operate in silos, leading to fragmented customer journeys. Delivering a consistent, unified hybrid CX requires tightly integrating these worlds into a cohesive ecosystem. When channels, data and engagement strategies converge across onsite, in-app, online, and in-store touchpoints, brands can create consistent, personalized experiences. This article will delve into the best practices for enabling hybrid CX and will look at how brands seamlessly bridge both physical and digital environments.
Defining Hybrid CX
The hybrid customer experience is designed to seamlessly blend a brand's physical and digital touchpoints to create a unified, omnichannel journey. It delivers consistent convenience, personalization and value across all of the channels where customers interact with a brand, including their website, mobile app and email communications, all the way to their brick-and-mortar storefront.
Hybrid CX strategically connects data and insights between digital and physical interactions. This eliminates silos and aligns all channels into one continual experience that meets consumers anywhere with context and purpose. The goal is the integration of online and offline channels into a holistic ecosystem built around customers' needs and preferences.
Ted Sfikas, senior director of digital strategy at Tealium, a customer data platform provider, told CMSWire that one of the most prominent goals in a CX strategy is to make omnichannel devices and touchpoints indistinguishable to the customer. "The experience that started on a mobile app is now expected to be carried over into a physical storefront, then followed up with an entirely different medium like a phone call or text message."
Related Article: How to Create Better Hybrid Retail Customer Experiences
The Lines Between Online & Offline Are Getting Blurry
Customers today spend as much time shopping online as they do in brick-and-mortar storefronts. They may select items online, and then drive to the store to examine them in hand. Or they may locate products in a store, and then go look them up online to find the best price. Here are some other examples of how brands are blurring the lines between online and offline customer experiences:
- BOPIS: "Buy online, pick up in-store" services allow customers to purchase products online and conveniently pick them up at a physical retail location.
- Virtual try-on: Using AR/VR technology, customers can virtually "try on" clothing, makeup and accessories online to visualize them as if in a store fitting room.
- Connected fitting rooms: In-store fitting rooms with intelligent mirrors let shoppers request different sizes, see options and transact via touchscreens.
- Geofencing offers: Retail apps trigger offers or personalized messages when customers are detected near physical stores based on location data.
- Beacon technologies: Sensors in stores track customers' physical journeys and engage with apps and digital profiles in real-time.
- Click and collect: Ordering food online for pick up in-store blends ecommerce convenience with quick physical fulfillment.
- Mobile apps as store guides: Retail apps that provide in-store navigation, product reviews, recommendations and coupons via customers' devices as they shop.
The common thread is using technology to create seamless experiences uniting the digital and physical environments. “Not surprisingly, it is the most tech-savvy consumers, like GenZ and millennials, who are driving the expectations for a portable and unified CX across devices,” said Sfikas. “Their brand loyalty is earned by a strong presence in multiple channels, which requires a consistent UX. For brands, CX flexibility is not just nice to have — it’s table stakes.”
Related Article: 1 Trip to the Mall, 2 Hybrid Customer Experiences
Examples of Hybrid CX
Since the pandemic, many people have had the experience of ordering groceries online and driving to the store to pick up the order curbside. This is a simple example of a hybrid customer experience. Here are some other examples of brands that are effectively delivering hybrid customer experiences:
Much like the example above, Starbucks integrates mobile ordering with in-store visits, and rewards programs bring physical and app purchases together. Customers can start orders online and finish them in-store for a unified experience. Customers can also load their Starbucks app with funds, and use it in-store to purchase Starbucks products.
Disney’s Magic Bands are flexible plastic electronic bracelets that customers can use during their Disney vacation. Inside each band is an RFID chip that enables the band to interact with Disney technology. Wearers of the Magic Bands can use location services in the park, redeem FastPass selections, and enter theme parks, and the bands can also be used as hotel room keys, credit cards and PhotoPass information.
Amazon Go cashier-less convenience stores use "Just Walk Out" technology, which blends physical shopping with digital payments and tracking. Customers check-in online via the app when entering the store, and as one might guess, just walk out when they are done shopping.
Apple Stores have Today at Apple sessions where customers can enroll in-store for online digital courses where they can learn essential music, photo and video skills as well as programming (coding for kids).
Walgreens’ digital pharmacy apps work in conjunction with retail locations. Customers are able to order refills online and pick them up in-store, connecting ecommerce with brick-and-mortar.
Sephora’s Virtual Artist app enables customers to virtually "try on" an almost infinite library of eyeshadows, lip colors and even false lashes. Virtual step-by-step tutorials are customized to each user’s own face, enabling them to have a virtual makeover — all from the comfort of home.
In each case, the brands take advantage of mobile, digital profiles, predictive analytics and connected technologies to create hybrid experiences, which bring together the best of online and in-store retailing.
Lack of Consistency Causes Confusion and Friction
When customers have disjointed, inconsistent experiences across a brand's channels, it often creates confusion, mistrust, and added friction. For example, if the messaging and branding customers see on a brand's website and social media pages do not align with what they experience in-store, it causes disconnects and mixed signals about the brand's offerings and identity. If the prices listed online don't match what customers are charged in physical checkout lines, it can create perceptions of bait-and-switch tactics.
Additionally, fragmented data and contexts across channels force customers to repeatedly recreate their needs and preferences every time they switch environments. When their purchase history, loyalty status and shopping cart don't carry over between a website and a mobile app, customers must restart the experience from scratch, which can be very frustrating. Also, limitations that are only specific to certain channels inhibit convenience for the customer.
Inconsistent experiences mean constantly restarting rather than seamlessly continuing interactions as customers move from one channel to another. This falls short of customer expectations and leads to many pain points that unified hybrid CX strategies seek to avoid.
Michael Allmond, VP and co-founder at Lover's Lane, a lingerie, apparel and romantic products store, told CMSWire that his business began as a brick-and-mortar retail in 1992, and in order to be in business for over 30 years, it’s had to adapt to the digital world. "In order to align the customer experience in our retail stores with the online shopping experience, we had a few things we knew we needed to do," said Allmond.
"First, we have our romance specialists in the stores, which are our associates that have deep product knowledge and can help customers find what they are looking for, even when the customer isn't sure,’ explained Allmond. “We needed to mirror that on our website so we needed to put as much product knowledge and information as possible there so we can help customers make informed purchases."
Because the Lover's Lane stores rely heavily on customer feedback, they realized that they needed to incorporate that into the digital experience as well. "We partnered with a leading customer experience platform to make it easy for our customers to review both our brand and the products we sell," said Allmond.
Consistency in messaging is also extremely important when using a hybrid approach. "One thing we are adamant about is messaging. We have our brand messages synced across all of our touchpoints," explained Allmond. "Because we have a large variety of channels for our marketing, we needed to make sure all of these lined up. So whether you see one of our billboards, a TV ad, a social media post, or an email, or you're in our store, you will see consistent messaging. This is important to build trust so that customer churn doesn't become a problem."
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Final Thoughts on Hybrid CX
To meet rising customer expectations, brands must break down silos and tightly integrate their digital and physical channels into one unified ecosystem. Blurring the lines between online and offline with mobile apps, connected technologies, consistent branding and omnichannel data will enable brands to provide seamless, personalized hybrid experiences across all of a brand’s channels.
