Forrester: - Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Multichannel issues are not new to the retail industry. However, retailers have made little progress over the last few years; we give the overall industry a grade of C- on its multichannel abilities. While this mediocre performance may have been okay in the past, consumers will push retailers to improve their multichannel capabilities. To uncover multichannel best practices, we spoke with leading multichannel retailers. Our research uncovered best practices in four areas: selling, service, organization and culture, and measurement and metrics. Not all retailers share the same priorities; store-based retailers need to focus more on selling, while manufacturers need to focus on organization and culture.