joyce-echessa

Guest Author

Joyce Echessa

Let’s take a deep look at Android's different options for running operations in the background.

Background Processing in Android

diegopoza

System Engineer, geek, foodie, technology lover, speaker.

Sr Manager, Developer Advocacy

Diego Poza

Securing customer loyalty means offering choices about how to shop.



Retailers in the COVID-19 era have been forced to integrate their digital operations with their brick-and-mortar stores as a means of survival. According to research from digital signage platform [Raydiant](https://www.raydiant.com/blog/reopening-of-retail/), 55% of retailers report that without expanding into e-commerce, they’re unsure whether they would have survived the pandemic, or they’re certain their business would have failed.

Yet the same research found that only a small fraction of retailers plan to keep these integrations of physical and digital operations in place after the pandemic (14% for delivery and 17% for curbside pickup).

This disconnect shows that marketers and data officers still don’t fully appreciate the harmonizing of digital and physical operations and making them flexible enough to respond to changing customer needs. But it is possible to express brick-and-mortar strengths in the digital world; it just means getting smart about your [omnichannel strategy](https://auth0.com/blog/why-an-omnichannel-strategy-is-critical-in-2020/). Here are three ways to start.

## Use Brick-and-Mortar Stores for Online Pickups and Returns

In recent years, retailers have discovered that using physical stores for fulfillment and returns are key to staying competitive in the age of Amazon. These options are convenient for customers and good for retailers since customers who step inside a store are more likely to make a second purchase.

Implementing a buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) program has been a particularly valuable strategy during the pandemic since it lets customers minimize the amount of time they have to spend in stores. As early as April, the [National Retail Federation reported](https://nrf.com/blog/how-retailers-are-adapting-curbside-pickup) that half of the consumers used BOPIS because of the pandemic.

In the long run, buy online, return in-store (BORIS) may prove to be just as valuable to retailers as BOPIS because it ensures quicker restocking of returned items and eliminates the cost and logistical challenges of accepting returns by mail.

### Let customers choose

Integrating stores into online pickups and returns is most effective when you present it to customers as a choice and let them pick the method that’s best for them. When a customer needs something urgently, they can pick it up that day, but if they don’t mind waiting, they can get the item delivered and save themselves a trip to the store. Walmart credits this strategy for its success during the pandemic. Its online sales rose 97% in the second quarter but not at a cost to store sales, which grew 9.3%.

[Walmart CEO Douglas McMillon](https://multichannelmerchant.com/ecommerce/walmart-posts-blowout-ecommerce-growth-nearly-doubling-sales-q2/) plans to keep weaving together online and in-person strategies with an omnichannel approach in which “the customer is ultimately in charge.” Walmart plans to add a membership program to further drive loyalty by giving customers flexibility. Says McMillon: “Sometimes they’ll be in the store, and sometimes they’ll do pickup, and sometimes they’ll do delivery, and many of them will buy a membership.”

### Unite all locations with a single inventory

Successfully implementing these programs requires a high degree of visibility into both customers and inventory. You need access to a customer’s geographic location, and you need to pinpoint the location of the product they’re looking for. With this information, when a customer is browsing online, you can provide them with the best options at checkout. If the item they want is in a far-off warehouse, deliver it. If it’s at their neighborhood store, let them pick it up. If it’s at a store a few miles away, give them a choice.

“Flexible inventory is the best inventory,” noted [Jonathan Jonas](https://multichannelmerchant.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/mcm_warehouse_software_report_v5.pdf), co-founder of eCommerce infrastructure consultancy Decent Startup. He predicts that in the coming years, “we could also see more and more same-day offerings as fulfilling eCommerce orders from store becomes a normal part of everyday operations.”

## Personalize Customer Outreach Without Being Invasive

Retailers are always looking for ways to give their brand that “personal touch,” and for marketers, that increasingly means targeted digital outreach. Properly employed, these efforts can drive customers to your stores, but it’s important to be cautious about the data you ask for and how you use it.

Some retailers, for instance, have experimented with using customers’ location data to send notifications to customers’ phones when they’re near a store. However, retailers need to use this data cautiously or risk alienating consumers.

[Mike McGuire, VP analyst for Gartner Marketing](https://www.chiefmarketer.com/gartner-analyst-qa-martech-innovations-in-the-covid-19-era/), points out that “proximity does not equal permission. Many consumers will keep location tracking off of their applications because they don’t want to be pestered.” He says that Gartner’s surveys found that consumers will enable location tracking only in cases when it delivers value to them: finding a store near them or if a product needs to be delivered to them.

### Prioritize privacy and choice in data collection

Keeping customer value and privacy in mind is critical in assessing how you should collect and employ personal data. Gartner recognizes this growing concern, and they included “[customer data ethics](https://www.chiefmarketer.com/martech-innovation-gartners-hype-cycle-for-digital-marketing-2020-report/)” on their 2020 Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing. This highlights the need for retailers to be transparent, legally compliant, and secure, even as they innovate. That means, at a baseline, that personally identifiable data should be encrypted and access to it should be rigorously controlled. At a time when customer trust is everything, you don’t want to squander it with a data breach.

There are less invasive methods for targeted digital marketing that can still drive customers to stores. For instance, optimizing your company for local SEO is still the best way to find new customers instead of losing them to online competitors.

You should also look for opportunities for targeting that require customers to directly opt-in, like emails and push notifications that tell them about sales at their local store. [_Multichannel Merchant_](https://multichannelmerchant.com/blog/digital-tools-help-retailers-adapt-post-quarantine-world/) suggests using in-store signs to promote digital marketing. “Stores can have signs for customers to text ‘Welcome Back’ to a five-digit number to receive an exclusive promotion. A quick text elevates their store visit and opts them in for future updates.”

## Guarantee Adaptability With an Omnichannel Approach

We don’t know when the pandemic will end or how it will affect consumer habits in the long-term, but the retailers that survive and thrive will be the ones that embrace [organizational change](https://academy.whatfix.com/change-management-101/) to stay aligned with their customers. The only way to do that effectively is with an omnichannel strategy that lets you allocate resources to the right channels and make adjustments as you go.

![Omnichannel Diagram](https://images.ctfassets.net/23aumh6u8s0i/4R9jiLsQ22iKfF5nFYW5qm/5e22f180c5c980130af02a358c9d7d04/omnichannel_diagram)

First and foremost, this requires retailers to know these customers on both a broad and granular level, and tailor your approach to them based on your knowledge. In an effective omnichannel approach, user identity is the connective tissue between digital and physical transactions. It’s what lets you create seamless customer experiences and maintain visibility over your customers and their habits. A customer can order a product on their laptop, get a push notification on their phone when it’s ready, and pick it up curbside; it works because the retailer’s identity management system keeps track of their journey, from computer to mobile device to physical location.

To get this bird’s-eye view of customers, use your [customer identity and access management (CIAM)](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-ciam/) system to create a single source of truth about each customer. Each interaction with your company&mdash;whether in-store or online&mdash;feeds into a central profile, which enables better audience segmentation and marketing. The analytics from your CIAM platform will give you real-time insights into shoppers’ habits, so you can provide the right experiences based on their needs.

The important thing is to build adaptation and evolution into your strategy. Right now, an omnichannel approach may mean using your physical stores to promote digital channels, like retailers with signs out front that advertise curbside pickup. In the future, when the pandemic subsides, you can use digital marketing to encourage customers to return to stores.

And in the meantime, use those digital channels to keep customers informed and connected to physical stores. Post updates about the health precautions your company is taking. Use blogging and social media to humanize your in-store teams and keep the personal connection alive.

## Brick and Mortar Doesn’t Have to Mean Stuck in the Mud

Customers don’t want to choose between in-person and online shopping. What they want and expect are retail experiences that let them effortlessly move between channels.

When you embrace your customers’ flexibility, you can start finding more flexibility in how your digital and brick-and-mortar operations complement each other. Your stores can simultaneously be showrooms, warehouses, and community hubs. Your customers will use digital channels to tell you which option they need. You just need to have the capabilities to listen.

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Three Ways Retailers Can Harmonize Brick-and-Mortar and Digital Operations

andrew-akers

I'm a product marketing manager who loves learning about technology, information security, and identity. My goal is to turn that knowledge into positive outcomes for our customers. Before Auth0, I was a product marketing manager at Cisco in the network security division. In my spare time, you can find me spending time with my family, reading, writing, and working on endless home improvement projects.

Product Marketing Manager

Andrew Akers

cami-cano

I am a product manager, and I am passionate about building great tools for software engineers. I am always looking to learn more about my customers in order to develop sustainable solutions for them. This approach to product management is always pushing me to collaborate with people across the entire company, which is my favorite part of the job. Before joining Auth0, I worked at GitHub, where I was a product manager on GitHub Enterprise. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my family, running, and reading non-fiction.

Product Manager

Cami Cano

Identify incidents earlier and continuously monitor performance with Auth0 and Datadog.


In today’s cloud-centric world, it is critical for engineering, infrastructure, and security teams to be able to consistently monitor their environments and respond to incidents. For this reason, Datadog, a monitoring platform for cloud applications, has become a critical tool for many companies. It brings together data from servers, containers, databases, and third-party services to make the stack entirely observable.

Auth0 now joins the hundreds of Datadog partners to deliver mission-critical identity information to our joint customers. This integration allows customers to incorporate Auth0 logs into their existing monitoring and alerting dashboards – all without additional engineering work.

The integration with Datadog is enabled by Auth0 Log Streaming. This capability works by sending batches of log events as they are generated in Auth0, giving customers up-to-date information about their Auth0 tenant. Log streaming is capable of delivering 10X more logs and guarantees delivery with error handling. Today we are also releasing a generic webhook allowing you to deliver near real-time logs to most third-party tools.

The integration with Datadog provides a number of important benefits, including:

### Visualize auth0 Data Without Extra Development Time

One of the key benefits of using Datadog is the ability to collect and visualize data in order to identify trends. Engineering teams use it to visualize error rates and traffic data. Security teams use it to visualize authorization traffic and set up alerts for high-risk actions. And infrastructure teams use Datadog to visualize performance metrics and traffic data to ensure stability.

Identity data provides crucial insight to all of these use cases, allowing teams to better identify problems and make informed decisions.

### Make Informed Decisions About System Architecture and Development

By tracking identity trends over time, teams can make informed decisions about product development or system architecture. For example, using authentication data to determine which devices to prioritize development. Likewise, by tracking peak login times and what geographies users are accessing the app from, system architecture teams can determine when and where to scale up resources.

### Quickly Respond to Performance and Security Incidents

In addition to monitoring historical data to spot trends, it is just as important to use identity information to quickly identify security and performance incidents. For instance, massive spikes in unsuccessful login attempts could indicate an ongoing [credential stuffing attack](https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-credential-stuffing/), one of the most common threats targeting identity systems.

By configuring thresholds, security teams can set up alerts to notify them when suspicious events take place, allowing them to more quickly respond to security incidents.

## This Integration Is Enabled by Log Streaming

The Datadog integration is possible thanks to the Auth0 Log Streaming. It works by continuously delivering log events as they are generated in Auth0, providing customers near real-time information. Log Streaming effectively allows logs to be treated as new points of extensibility, allowing you to kick off automated processes in third party tools based on Auth0 events.

## Learn More
Using Datadog with Auth0 unlocks a variety of use cases. Learn how to set up the integration [here](https://auth0.com/docs/logs/streams/datadog), or [sign up for a free Auth0 trial](https://auth0.com/signup).


<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Effective Operations with Auth0 and Datadog

Help is just a click (or phone call) away. Any day. Any time.



When you work with Auth0, you gain a partner that is committed to your success. “The Customer Success team was always accommodating and made time for us when we had an issue,” said Cris Concepcion, ‎[_former Platform Engineering Manager at O’Reilly Media_](https://auth0.com/learn/safari-case-study/). “Having Auth0 around to provide immediate answers to our questions saved our developers a great deal of time.”
We are always thinking of ways we can build better partnerships with our customers. To that end, Auth0 is enhancing its support offerings. With the release of the [_Premier Support_](https://auth0.com/docs/support) offering, Auth0 is now including a number of new support features, including:

### **Phone Support**

Enterprise customers with a Premier Support agreement have access to 24x7 phone support with Auth0 experts. This ensures customers can quickly receive answers to their questions and problems from a team of designated support engineers.

### **Coverage 24x7x365**

The Premier Support package includes coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The target response times varies based on your requirements. See the table below for a description of response times:


* **Severity 1**: Urgent requests with a target response time of **30 minutes**.
* **Severity 2**: Requests with a significant business impact, target response time of **1 hour**.
* **Severity 3**: For minor feature or function issues and general questions, target response time of **8 hours**. 	
* **Severity 4**: For minor problems and enhancement requests, target response time of **12 hours**.

### **Designated Support Teams**

Customers with Premier Support agreements will be assigned a designated team of support engineers. This ensures that when the customer raises a ticket or calls support, they are dealing with the same group of support engineers who are familiar with the customers deployments and past support tickets. Ultimately, this will improve the time needed to resolve a problem and reduce future challenges.

### **Ticket Review and Analysis**

Once a month, once a quarter, or per customer request, you can review your support tickets with your Auth0 team. Not only will we help you identify trends and practices that lead to your technical queries, but we can also help you better adhere to best practices and avoid problems in the future.

### **Additional Features**

The Premier Support offering also includes features common to other Auth0 support plans, such as:

* Answering questions concerning usage issues related to Auth0-Platform-specific features, options, and configurations
* Providing initial and high-level suggestions regarding the appropriate usage, features, or solution configurations for the particular type of reporting, analysis, or functionality
* Isolating, documenting, and finding alternative solutions for reported defects
* Working with Auth0 Operations, Product, Software Development, and QA staff to submit Change Requests, Enhancement Requests, and provide fixes for the Auth0 Platform as necessary
* Addressing your concerns with online or printed documentation, providing additional examples or explanation for concepts requiring clarification
* Access to online release notes for updates
* Access to Auth0’s online library of support webinars and knowledgebase
* Access to Auth0’s Customer Community forums to collaborate with fellow Auth0 customers

<include src="TweetQuote" quoteText="When you work with Auth0, you gain a partner that is committed to your success. Learn how Premier Support can help you overcome identity challenges."/>

**Learn more** about the [_Auth0 Premier Support offering here_](https://auth0.com/docs/support) or [_talk to a sales representative._](https://auth0.com/contact-us?place=blog%20post&type=link&text=talk%20to%20a%20sales%20representative)

<include src="asides/AboutAuth0" />


Auth0 launches Premier Support

37590801?s=460&v=4

A software engineer who dreams about non-electric sheep and autonomous vehicles and likes to champion security.

Software Engineer

Dan Arias

Learn how to use web workers in JavaScript to create parallel programming and perform multiple operations simultaneously rather than interleaving them.

"operations"