Describe Commerce channels
Organizations need the ability to unify the shopping experience across all shopper touchpoints (channels). These include traditional brick-and-mortar store channels, online stores, and call centers. Each channel may need to support specific or unique product assortments, prices and discounts, payment methods, delivery methods, or users; however, modern organizations need systems that give customers the convenience and flexibility to buy in-store or online and pick up in other locations or get home delivery with optimized ordering and fulfillment tools.
Online store
Commerce supports online channels, which give customers the option of purchasing products from a digital storefront. It enables the creation of digital experiences by using built-in web authoring and development tools to produce engaging and intelligent digital storefronts. In Commerce, users can deploy a new e-commerce tenant by using Lifecycle Services, followed by configuring the e-commerce site using the Commerce site builder. The e-commerce site is associated with the online store channel. The online store channel is where products, pricing, payment method, delivery mode, fulfillment center, and other aspects of the online experience are established.
Brick-and-mortar store
Commerce supports brick-and-mortar channels. The robust Store Commerce application is used to process sales orders, manage store operations, perform customer service functions, and maintain store inventory. The Store Commerce application can run on various devices and operating systems (Windows, Android, iOS) or through a web browser. The application can run as a connected online application, or it can be installed locally on Windows operating system devices. You may want a local installation to address situations where cloud connectivity isn't reliable and where periodic offline scenarios need to be supported.
The Store Commerce application provides a customizable user interface that allows organizations to create application layouts that reflect their brand and themes. The application is highly extensible, which allows organizations to add more capabilities or integrate into third-party solutions if needed. The application can be deployed on mobile or fixed devices, in the cloud or on-premises, and can be used in various business-to-business and business-to-consumer scenarios.
Call center
In Commerce, a call center is a type of channel that can be defined in the application. Defining a specific channel for your call center entities allows the system to tie specific data defaults and order processing defaults to sales orders created by a user of the call center channel.
Call center order capture features include advanced price and promotions, catalogs, gift cards, loyalty programs, and coupons. Call center orders are also used by the Store Commerce application to support cross-channel order fulfillment scenarios.
In addition to supporting order creation, the call center module also provides a user-friendly customer service application. The application makes it easier for users to locate customer accounts and review all the related customer order data and attributes. The customer service screen is designed to enable a user to quickly access order-related data that allow them to answer the most common order-related questions received from customers. From the customer service form, users can service not only orders created in the call center. They'll have the ability to view and edit or cancel orders that were created in the Online and Store channels as well if needed.