Omnichannel Engagement If you’ve never heard of the term “omnichannel”, it’s time for you to sit up and take notice. It’s one of the trends that has been picked up on the radar of huge companies such as Salesforce and Zendesk, becoming part of decks of consultants like McKinsey, and and being practiced by social channels like Twitter.
1. You’re probably doing it wrong
Omnichannel engagement is about providing consistent experiences to customers and stakeholders across the whole gamut of possible mediums they could reach your business on.
Interactions with someone at a company is probably one of the most personal and value-creating touchpoints for a customer; frustrations or inconsistency among the different channels will potentially turn these touchpoints into ones that generate dissatisfaction instead of higher customer equity. As such, it’s extremely important for you to understand each channel your customer reaches you on, and how to keep it a pleasant experience every time.
2. It’s changing the way businesses are run
It used to be that having a storefront was all you had to tend to. Eventually came the telephone. And SMS. Then email.
Having these channels doesn’t only impact operations and customer service. It also impacts your marketing and branding, sales, finance, and human resource allocations, among other things. Think about the potential of turning each of these touchpoints into a brand experience for the customer; about how you could upsell your other products based on channels; how you need to now hire “social media managers” on your team… The impacts are big, and you need to consider all of them as a whole when evaluating how your business is going to thrive in this era.
3. It’s about value, but not just about profits
When we talk about engagement, it’s not necessarily pointing only to sales. Sales for your company can only come when you provide enough value to customers. Back in Marketing 101, you may have heard of the 4Ps – Your Product, Place, Promotion elements need to be in place and providing value before you can even think about Price and how to get back the value as a company from customers.
4. Emerging trends in chat, wearables & IoT are impacting Omnichannel Engagement
The buzzwords of our time are probably all in the point you just read above (other than artificial intelligence, a topic for another day). However, they are trends for a reason, and you need to be aware of them as they progress into more mature consumer-ready technologies.
Chat is already pervasive among consumers, riding on the coattails of the mobile trend. Most likely, you’re reading this on mobile while chatting with your friends on one of the nine chat apps on your phone. Looking at eCommerce players like Qoo10 and Taobao, you’ll also find that chat has become indispensable in the transaction process.
5. Your becoming-mobile workforce needs to know Omnichannel Engagement
From the point of your team, it is also important to understand that all of these new channels and trends can be confusing. With so many more channels to monitor, it will get more chaotic and tiring to manage.
Workforces are becoming even more mobile these days, with distributed teams and telecommuting becoming more common over time. Not only could this save traveling time. Always-on communications even more essential for businesses.
6. Your customers expect Omnichannel Engagement
The most important thing about being omnichannel is that your customers now expect it from you. As summary of all the points listed above, we can conclude that because you have all these channels set up and are. Perhaps, selling through them already, you will need to have a certain presence in servicing and supporting customers in these channels.
Customers don’t see channels as channels in themselves – hence the experience needs to be seamless across all of them. When you have an issue, for example, do you think of “X Company’s Twitter” as different from “X Company’s email”? Rather unlikely – you would see them as “X Company”. And you will judge them based on how responsive, comprehensive and consistent they are as they respond to you.
If you already expect this from the companies that you buy from or do business with. Then you need to understand that your customers expect likewise from your business.
7. It’s not as hard as you think Omnichannel Engagement
All of these demands and trends may sound daunting, but recognize that they are there as part of your life as well. You may talk to different people on different platforms, and post different updates on different social channels. Treat customers as people – they are human, just as our friends are. While lines may blur across channels. That’s probably because you should be seeing them as a whole and not just as separate channels.
Omnichannel engagement is simply a way of thinking about your engagement in an ecosystem of channels that support your business strategy and customer needs. By taking the first step to recognize, detail and understand the big picture of all these channels in concert. You will able to then strategize what needs to do to move your business forward in this day and age.
was created to help teams like yours respond faster & better, by creating and maintaining a central team repository of replies that can be used on your mobile keyboard on every channel (chat, mail, message – you name it). That way, your team members will be able to access and visualize how others are using the replies. And quickly get started on replying too. The consistency across all channels will increase customer satisfaction and employee happiness over time.