32 Omnichannel Technology Tools to Sell Anywhere, All the Time

Published in

Sales Hacker

10 min readJul 18, 2018

Three-fourths of customers report using multiple channels throughout their shopping journey. Consequently, if you don’t have omnichannel technology tools in your sales stack, you’re already behind competition.

Fortunately, there are some great tools on the market to help businesses conquer omnichannel sales. With these solutions in place, you’ll be able to seamlessly take customers from the research phase to final purchase. But with so many solutions available, it can be difficult to narrow your options down to just one.

This guide will help you learn a little more about your options in omnichannel technology.

Why Omnichannel?

Before you get started on your search, it’s important to understand how customers shop.

This is perfectly illustrated by the buying funnel. This concept describes the steps a shopper goes through before making a final buying decision. It starts with an awareness that they want or need an item, followed by the familiarity stage, where they learn more about how to fulfill that need.

As a shopper, you’re at the familiarity stage as you seek to learn more about the technology you need to win customers. Your target customers are still at the beginning, though, where they’ll hopefully find their way down the funnel.

Statistics show that they go online to do this, with 82 percent of customers using the internet for research before buying.

This has given rise to the “omnishopper,” which refers to the habit of researching across multiple devices. To satisfy this shopper, brands must not only have a robust online presence, but also omnichannel technology in place to manage sales.

What Does Omnichannel Technology Look Like in Sales?

You likely already know what customers will see when they launch a search for the products or services you sell. You’ve optimized your content for SEO and ensured you’re in compliance with Google regulations. But even if you’re ranking well, this may not translate to conversions.

A good omnichannel tool makes it as easy as possible for customers to get the information they need. If they can’t find it on your website, they should be able to easily launch a chat with one of your friendly employees.

Most importantly, you need the analytics required to track all of their activities. You should be consistently monitoring customer activity to improve your offerings to meet their always-changing needs.

Now that you know what features a great sales tool has, this list can help you find the perfect solution for your business.

We’ve gathered the best of the best to make your search as easy as possible.

Customer Interactions
Messaging
Email
Personalization
Ecommerce
Social Selling
Self-Service
Product Listings
Fulfillment
Inventory Management

Customer Interactions

GeneSys

GeneSys empowers contact centers to easily manage customer interactions across all channels.

The software monitors customer journeys and helps route customers from social media to calling on the phone to emailing, chatting, or sending a text message.

Notable Clients: PayPal, Vodafone, Marks & Spencer
Supported Channels: Website, email, social media, phone, chat, SMS

NextOS

Nextiva’s NextOS platform is our favorite for its wide range of features. In addition to chat, you’ll also easily launch surveys and conduct voice chat over VoIP phone systems. Moreover, you can track customer activity, and gather everything in a CRM.

NextOS tracks customer behaviors across every channel and gives you the information you need to turn that data into action. You’ll also have rules that will help you make sure all of your activities are consistent, whether you’re meeting customers on social media, in text, or in chat.

Notable Clients: Netflix, Ashley, Taco Bell
Supported Channels: Website, social media, voice, email

Bold360

LogMeIn’s Bold360 gives you the tools necessary to interact with customers across a variety of platforms. Conversations are monitored across your website, social media, and customer chats. Thus making it easy to route incoming requests to the appropriate representatives.

When a team member gets an invitation to interact with a customer, the totality of the conversation is available for view to make those interactions more effective.

Notable Clients: Intuit, The North Face, Vodafone
Supported Channels: Website, social media, messaging, video chat

Messaging

Phizzle

If you want to build messaging into all your platforms, you’ll need an API. Phizzle lets you sync all of your customer communications across Twitter, email, SMS, and more.

Phizzle uses identity resolution to ensure your reps know the full history of each customer. All data is combined in one place to give your team the information to run successful lead generation marketing campaigns.

Notable Clients: HBO, Ben & Jerry’s, Subway
Supported Channels: Website, social media, email, SMS

Userlike

Chat is an important part of supporting customers, and Userlike specializes in multichannel chat support. Whether customers are hanging out on your Facebook business page or browsing your website, you can invite them to chat.

If you’re offline, a chatbot collects information on interested customers and then forwards the chat to a rep.

Notable Clients: Sage, Trivago, Harvard University
Supported Channels: Website, Facebook, Telegram, SMS

Smoope

Smoope specializes in multichannel communications, with messaging services built into websites and apps.

When a customer wants to reach you, help is just a click away. You can also send files and go through past conversations. One of Smoope’s biggest strengths is its multilingual support, which comes in handy for businesses that operate internationally.

Notable Clients: Vodafone, Artelia, BrightOne
Supported Channels: Website, apps, messenger software

Email

GetResponse

GetResponse is a popular email tool to create sales emails that get responses. But you can also create landing pages, web forms, and autoresponders using the tool.

A drag-and-drop email creator lets you track customer interactions and send targeted emails in real time. Behind it all are advanced analytics that bring you information on customers that will help you customize your interactions.

Notable Clients: Hilton, Avon, Tiger Woods Foundation
Supported Channels: Email, website, webinars

Reply

Reply is a tool that helps your sales teams create email campaigns for inbound and outbound sales. You can set up drip campaigns that automatically deploy to the appropriate customers at the perfect time.

Notable Clients: Product Hunt, Business Insider, Capterra
Supported Channels: Email, CRM

Selligent

It’s no longer enough to send blanket emails to large groups of people. Selligent curates data from all of your channels to help you create personalized emails. You’ll contact customers at their exact location in the buying journey, making it far more likely they’ll act on your message. If a customer makes a purchase, for instance, you can email a message asking for a rating. This data is then collated to improve your marketing campaigns.

Notable Clients: Intercontinental Hotels Group, Volcom, Wayfair
Supported Channels: Website, email, mobile, CRM

Personalization

Adobe Target

Today’s customers expect a personalized approach from brands, and Adobe seeks to deliver it. You merely insert a line of code on any of your properties where you want tracking. After this, wait for the analytics to do their work.

By monitoring the activities of customers, you can adjust your sales and marketing campaigns to better meet demands. A visitor profile is built for each customer that translates across every platform of yours that customer uses.

Notable Clients: Vodafone, Marriott, Dell
Supported Channels: Website, apps

Personyze

Personyze runs in the background, creating profiles of each visitor to your website. That information is then used to deliver personalized marketing messages and ads to improve sales.

Profiles pull information from interactions with your site, as well as more than 70 other attributes. These include social media information, data from your CRM, geolocation, and form or login input.

Notable Clients: HomeAway, iForex, Kaplan International Colleges
Supported Channels: Website, email

SiteSpect

SiteSpect gains information on your visitors and works to present a consistent user experience. The software runs in the background to make sure customer history is seamless across devices.

Notable Clients: Walmart, SurveyMonkey, Staples
Supported Channels: Website, mobile

Ecommerce

BigCommerce

Retailers have unique needs when it comes to sales. BigCommerce works to address those needs. Recognizing that many customers move from store to website and back again, BigCommerce builds in features to make it easy.

You can connect your in-store POS to your website to ensure that when you sell an item, your inventory automatically updates.

Notable Clients: Skullcandy, PayPal Here, Toyota
Supported Channels: In store, website, social media

Shopify

For smaller retail operations, there’s Shopify. Its marketplace helps you set up an online shop and link it to your brick-and-mortar. You can also set your business up to sell through Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. The Theme Store lets you pick out a look for your shop and set it up in a few easy steps.

Notable Clients: MVMT, Bombas, Gymshark
Supported Channels: In store, Shopify store, social media

Apptus

Apptus uses big data and machine learning to improve a business’s online merchandising. Pages are optimized to a customer’s personal preference. Visitors, therefore, will see items they’re most likely to buy. This technology applies whether they’re visiting your site on a computer or mobile.

Notable Clients: Kicks, Pfister, Toyota Material Handling
Supported Channels: Website, mobile

Magento

Whether you sell in store, online, or a combination of both, Magento offers a seamless customer experience. You can set it up so that your customers can order online and pick up the item in the store for increased sales. The app also includes order and inventory management to help with your day-to-day operations.

Notable Clients: Coca-Cola, Bauhaus, Intelligentsia Coffee
Supported Channels: In store, website, mobile

Bronto

Ecommerce retailers don’t interact with customers in one place, so they need a sales management tool that can keep up. Oracle’s Bronto helps brands create customized email campaigns that reach customers at the right time. It does this by gathering information on customer social media interactions, purchases, website interactions, and more.

Notable Clients: Trek, Rebecca Minkoff, Lucky Brand
Supported Channels: Website, email, Shopify store, social

Social Selling

Teleperformance

They use “social listening” to learn more about each customer and put that information to use. Teleperformance’s social map builds a social media strategy to help you better engage your customers across all relevant social platforms.

Notable Clients: None listed
Supported Channels: Website, social media

SocialPort

With SocialPort, rFactr incorporates social media into your sales processes.The tool specializes in content syndication. It searches for information relevant to your brand and helps you put it to use on your own website and social platforms.

Notable Clients: SAP, Oracle, Intuit
Supported Channels: Website, social media

Insightpool

One top way to reach customers today is through the use of influencers. Insightpool is a comprehensive database that identifies influencers from more than 100 different platforms. You can then reach out to those influencers to ask them to spread the word about your great product.

Notable Clients: Coca-Cola, UPS, NBCUniversal
Supported Channels: Social, blogging

Self-Service

TeamSupport

No matter how delightful your support team members are, many customers prefer to get answers to their questions without making contact. In addition to providing a fully customizable support hub that customers can use across all platforms, TeamSupport offers an internal knowledgebase.

There’s also built-in chat to let customers interact with your representatives if they can’t find the answers they need.

Notable Clients: NBA, American Lung Association, FujiFilm
Supported Channels: Website, mobile, chat

HappyFox

HappyFox specializes in help desk solutions for businesses. The self-service portal lets customers place and check the status of tickets, interact with other customers, and get answers to their questions.

HappyFox also helps you provide customer service to customers on Facebook and Twitter.

Notable Clients: Leap Frog, Lowe’s, Sennheiser
Supported Channels: Website, mobile, social

Solvvy

Using the latest A.I. technology, Solvvy helps customers get the help they need, when they need it. The technology gathers information on customer interactions and uses the data to build a comprehensive library of resources. These libraries are built from past tickets, so they’ll easily address your most commonly-reported issues.

Notable Clients: TaskRabbit, Upwork, Blue Apron
Supported Channels: Website, mobile, help desk tickets

Product Listings

Omni Channel Hub

Displaying your products on your website is an important tool in getting them sold. But if you’re listing them across multiple marketplaces in addition to your website, that can be a challenge.

Omni Channel Hub helps you prepare and submit effective listings on sites like eBay, Amazon, and Google Shopping. Inventory is synced to ensure all information is constantly up-to-date.

Notable Clients: None listed
Supported Channels: Website, ecommerce platforms

Ecomdash

No matter how many products you have in your inventory, Ecomdash lets you upload each product and manage it using SKU mapping and other tools. You can also easily make changes across all platforms and import any prebuilt templates you have for your products.

Notable Clients: MeatSnacker, Radar Toys, Big Daddy Guns
Supported Channels: Website, ecommerce platforms

ChannelAdvisor

ChannelAdvisor’s goal is to give you all the sales management tools needed to list, sell, and ship your inventory. You’ll upload your items and they’ll be formatted as necessary to meet the requirements of each platform. You can sell on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and dozens more. The software integrates with your fulfillment partners to ensure items are shipped in a timely manner.

Notable Clients: Karen Kane, Timex, KitchenAid
Supported Channels: Website, ecommerce platforms

Fulfillment

Radial

Radial tailors its solutions directly to retailers interested in omnichannel. You’ll have support for ship-from-store, ship-to-store, and in-store pickup.

Notable Clients: Dick’s Sporting Goods, Shoe Carnival, PetSmart
Supported Channels: Website, in store

ShipStation

An important part of omnichannel is the ability to let customers shop both online and in your store. If you have a brick-and-mortar, ship-to-store is an important feature for your website to offer. ShipStation helps with that. If you’re using a marketplace like Amazon, eBay, or Shopify, you can set up order fulfillment to make sure orders go in the mail as quickly as possible.

Notable Clients: Spigen, Sock Club, LobsterAnywhere
Supported Channels: Website, in store, ecommerce platforms

Sellbrite

Sellbrite recognizes that many retailers go beyond merely selling on one website. Setup is easy and once the tool is in place, you’ll be able to list your inventory across multiple channels.

You’ll also have centralized shipping software so that you can get items in the mail as soon as they’re ordered.

Notable Clients: JJ Designer Jewelry, Labelle’s China, Dweebzilla
Supported Channels: Website, in store, ecommerce platforms

Inventory Management

StitchLabs

Managing inventory across multiple channels can be challenging, but StitchLabs is an industry leader. You can integrate your POS and accounting solutions to make sure all of your information is accurate. It also lets you pull reports to easily see which items are selling and which aren’t.

Notable Clients: Chubbies, Peak Design, Thinx
Supported Channels: Website, in store, Amazon, Shopify

MageStore

Multiple platforms mean multiple concerns. This includes managing products in various warehouses and distribution centers. As you grow, MageStore grows with you, making it easy for you to transfer products from one location to another.

Notable Clients: Poppets, Esmokes, Decathlon
Supported Channels: Website, in store

GoECart

Wherever you’re selling, GoECart can track and manage it for you. In-store POS, warehousing, and fulfillment are all included.

You’ll have multi-location inventory and fulfillment services along with inventory costing and profitability. GoECart tracks progress in real time so you never have to worry about overselling an item.

Notable Clients: Badgley Mischka, Brunomagli, SoccerPro.com
Supported Channels: Website, in store, ecommerce platforms

Originally published at Sales Hacker.