FREMONT, CA: There will continue to be a fight for brands to develop a real omnichannel experience in today's continually evolving digital transformation environment. Most brands today, if not all, are multichannel. To obtain a real omnichannel strategy, businesses must overcome the difficulties posed by individuals, processes and technology.
In terms of channel and workflow ownership, individuals and process may be the most significant problems of all the omnichannel problems. Marketing and customer service at many businesses do not even understand each other, much less interact with each other. It is necessary to break down that siloed strategy. The technology fight includes stitching together the multiple legacy technologies in which companies have invested considerably to promote the application of omnichannel. From a cost view, it is often preferred to migrate to a new solution to leverage prior investments.
When considering adding extra digital channels like chat or messaging solutions such as Facebook Messenger, the objective is to enhance customer experience rather than reducing the number of calls. During the digital transformation ride, unexpected findings may happen. After applying a chat channel, one of the CSAT results from the company came down. This was not because clients were less happy with the voice channel than they were; it was because they kept the business in the chat channel to a higher standard. And, results across the board have not been negatively affected—although CSAT scores have decreased, NPS has risen.
Regulations influencing particular sectors should be keenly conscious. Companies need to direct the interaction more closely in extremely controlled settings such as healthcare and financial services, rather than offering too much channel option. One instance is the banking industry, where it is not possible to disclose private data on government channels like social media. The best practice here is to authenticate in an app on a mobile device to fix the customer's problem rapidly.
The overall consensus is that the target of the omnichannel is more distant than most businesses believe. Connected consumer and company consumers drive this transformation's urgency, which in turn drives organisations to change. Omnichannel is all about linking various channels and increasing revenues. Ultimately, the gap between online and offline channels must be filled separately by an omnichannel approach.
