Digital receipts can bridge the cross-channel gap, say e-receipt advocates

Retailers concerned about being able to identify customers no matter where they shop and transactions no matter where they originate ought to look into digitizing their receipts, say vendors of e-receipt systems. “Digital receipts give a retailer a bigger picture of the customer and tie the customer’s transactions together across channels,” says Scott Allan, vice president of customer and alliance management at Crossvue, vendor of e-receipt systems. Digital receipts record all the receipt information in an electronic format that a retailer can search by fields, such as transaction number, customer name or date. Thus when a customer buys something on the web and wants to return it to the store, the store clerk can access the receipt via a point of sale terminal in a department or a computer at a customer service desk. “There are significant intangibles to this service,” Allan says, “including providing the customer the choice about how to interact with the retailer.”