If you’ve never heard of the term “omnichannel,” it’s time you sat up and take notice. It is one of the trends that has been captured on the radar of large companies such as Salesforce and Zendesk, becoming part of the decks of consultants such as McKinsey and being practiced by social channels such as Twitter.
The rationale behind omnichannel engagement stems from the explosion in the numbers and types of devices and channels available for customers to reach and engage with brands and businesses. When these channels become available, customers expect companies to honor their commitment to those channels by engaging extensively on them, no matter what the causes.
Read on to learn more about omnichannel engagement, why it’s important to you, and how you can capitalize on it to improve customer satisfaction and employee happiness.
1. You are probably doing it wrong
Omnichannel engagement is about delivering consistent experiences to customers and stakeholders across the full range of possible means they might reach your business.
Interactions with someone in a company is probably one of the most personal and value-creating touch points for a customer; frustrations or inconsistency between different channels can turn these touchpoints into points of dissatisfaction rather than greater customer equity. As such, it is extremely important that you understand each channel through which your customer contacts you and how to maintain a pleasant experience at all times.
If you think about your own business, what are some of the efforts that have been put into helping everyone on your team consistently respond to customers? Have you conducted training sessions, set priority lists, created a task force, and empowered your team with the right answers?
2. The way businesses are run is changing
It used to be that having a store was all you had to attend to. Finally the phone arrived. And SMS. Then email. And now you have all of the above plus everything from Facebook and Twitter, to Google search, WeChat and WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, and new channels that seem to pop up every other day, where customers are trying to reach you. Now, if you’re running a business in 1995, you could get away with trying to force your customers to call or email you with inquiries. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), you are in 2015 and you need to be prepared for this multitude of channels.
Having these channels doesn’t just affect operations and customer service. It also affects your marketing and branding, sales, finances, and HR assignments, among other things. Think about the potential of turning each of these touch points into a branded customer experience; about how you could sell your other products depending on the channels; how you need to hire “social media managers” on your team now… The impacts are big and you need to consider them all as a whole when assessing how your business will thrive in this age.
3. It’s about value, but not just profit
When we talk about engagement, we don’t necessarily mean just sales. Sales from your company can only happen when you provide enough value to customers. Back in Marketing 101, you may have heard of the 4Ps: Your product, place, and promotion elements need to be in place and provide value before you can think about price and how to win back value as a business from customers.
For many businesses, omnichannel engagement may well be built into product (for example, you have an app on your phone, tablet, and site), distribution (try to sell across multiple channels like social media and other e-commerce deal shops), and promotions (run your ad across online and offline media). Now, it’s even more critical that you have all of these channels on hand because your customers will most likely vet you across multiple channels before finally deciding to go with you.
So if you think about it, unless you’re offering enough value that people want to pay you for it, you can no longer just keep pushing for profit, because people will find out. And while you’re there, you better be providing great customer service and support, because since you can sell them on those channels, you better be willing to help them there, too.
4. Emerging trends in chat, wearables, and IoT are impacting you
The buzzwords of our time are probably all in the point you just read above (apart from artificial intelligence, a topic for another day). However, they are trends for a reason, and you should be aware of them as they move towards more mature consumer-ready technologies.
Chat is already ubiquitous among consumers, following in the footsteps of the mobile trend. Chances are you’re reading this on mobile while you’re chatting with your friends on one of the nine chat apps on your phone. Since chat apps are the most used and most engaged apps in customers’ lives, be prepared to interact with them where they already live. In countries like China, where channels like WeChat and QQ are prevalent among vocal consumers, it has become necessary for businesses to stay on those channels to handle service and sales inquiries 24 hours a day. If you look at e-commerce players like Qoo10 and Taobao, you will also find that chat has become indispensable in the transaction process.
Popularized by watches like the Apple Watch and Pebble, as well as fitness trackers like FitBit, wearables are also becoming a part of everyday life for consumers. Notifications and interactions have become even more personal and private, which means you can be closer to your customer or disconnect from your digital life. IoT (Internet of Things for short) follows as connected devices (many of which are tied to interfaces on wearables and mobile devices) that can also send you configuration logs and help messages, which you then have to plan even more to figure out how exactly to address and attribute to a single client.
5. Your mobile workforce needs to know
From your team’s point of view, it’s also important to understand that all these new channels and trends can be confusing. With so many more channels to monitor, it becomes more chaotic and exhausting to manage. Without proper training and empowerment, you could leave your team simmering in mounting unhappiness as they struggle to deal with new channel responsibilities without centralized repositories of responses or visibility into how others on the team are responding.
Workforces are becoming even more mobile these days, with distributed teams and telecommuting becoming more common over time. This could not only save travel time, but could increase productivity by reducing interruptions throughout the day and allowing team members to work when they are at their best. The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend also means teams are now responsible for their own use of phones and other devices, and could herald a true 24/7 connected workforce, making always-on, omnichannel communications even more essential for businesses.
6. Your customers expect it
The most important thing about being omnichannel is that your customers now expect it from you. As a summary of all the points listed above, we can conclude that since you have all these channels set up and perhaps already selling through them, you will need to have some service presence and customer support on these channels.
Customers don’t see channels as channels themselves; therefore, the experience must be perfect in all of them. When you have a problem, for example, do you think “Twitter from company X” is different from “email from company X”? Fairly unlikely – you’d view them as “Company X”, and judge them based on how responsive, complete and consistent they are when they reply to you.
If you already expect this from the companies you buy from or do business with, then you need to understand that your customers expect the same from your business.
7. It is not as difficult as you think
All of these demands and trends may seem overwhelming, but recognize that they are part of your life as well. You can talk to different people on different platforms and post different updates on different social channels. Treat customers like people: they are human, just like our friends. While the lines may blur across channels, that’s probably because you should be viewing them as a whole and not just 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 in recognising, detailing, and understanding the big picture of all of these channels together, you’ll be able to strategize what needs to be done to move your business forward today.