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Education

paid pickup or local delivery offers, which a growing number of consumers expect from merchants they like.
• Grocery stores adding order- If merchants' loyalty programs or email marketing campaigns involve offering
online functionality via mo- products or services that customers have already purchased, for example,
bile/web apps, fulfilling those they will inadvertently reveal to customers that they don't actually know their
orders with staff "personal customers, and likely lose their business.
shoppers," and providing con-
venient on-site pickup or de- Starbucks, after at least two reboots of its loyalty program and integrated
livery for free within certain payments platform, has over 16 million members signed up and demonstrates
areas the value of a convenient, order-ahead and pick-up system that works seamlessly
to integrate in-store and mobile customer, product and marketing/loyalty data.
• Local boutiques and retail
shops integrating their Ins- Of course, local merchants without heavy expectations of being mobile-
tagram presence and on-site friendly, or without established online stores and sales models, may be slower
sales, offering online shop- to recognize the need to adopt unified commerce platforms, especially if this
ping and checkout but with step involves new POS hardware, new payments systems, or complicated API
a peerless in-store personal or software integrations.
touch upon pickup
• Local restaurants increasingly However, today's customers increasingly expect a robust online presence for
moving toward an order-on- even small, local retailers; merchants who heed the clarion call to embrace this
line model where customers revolutionary, data-rich technology will reap the rewards … and so will you if
either pay via an app and pick you bring it to them.
up on site, or arrange third-
party payment and delivery Connie Spencer-Adams is vice president of partnerships at Womply, a leading software and API
via Uber Eats/DoorDash/ partner to the payments industry and the top provider of front-office software to small businesses.
Grubhub Contact her at connie@womply.com.

There was some hint of the potential
need for customer service along these
lines with early phoned-in (or mail
in) orders to local grocers, who hired
delivery boys for "regular customers."
However, today's busy merchants
know every second counts when
you play a volume game and are
competing with mega corporations,
and a seamless purchase experience
trumps industrial-level pricing.

When customers can input their own
orders, special requests, and payment
info, and when they can arrange
delivery or pickup details themselves
or via a third party, it's a much more
frictionless process. This creates not
only a time-savings for the merchant
but a better user experience for today's
customer who may not necessarily
want to talk to a live human to place
an order or pay for items.
Unified commerce data elevates
marketing, loyalty programs
Unified commerce, done properly
with integrated consumer and
merchant data, allows for more
than convenience for the customer.
It allows merchants to target past,
current and potential customers
with customized, relevant marketing
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