Customers today are typically interacting with brands through multiple channels before they decide to purchase – and they expect brands to display unified messaging, consistent experiences and a seamless navigation across them all.
While this increases the number of opportunities a brand has to persuade buyers, it also sets the bar very high for companies that are trying to impress, dazzle and delight prospects on disparate devices and digital environments.
Businesses that create a strong omni-channel
experience report a 56{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} higher
retention rate and have 30{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} higher customer lifetime values.
However, less than half of all businesses
place any priority on creating a better omni-channel experience.
One reason why companies may be putting this
type of optimization on the back burner is because of its perceived complexity.
In today’s marketplace channels of
interaction are ridiculously easy to create. But keeping them optimized and
continuously improving with any degree of consistency is a mammoth job!
But as the importance of an Omni-channel approach soars, smart tools are making an appearance to save the day and at least provide companies looking to make a start with a spring-board.
Let’s explore three categories of tools that you can use in your business right away to make rewarding omni-channel experiences a reality.
1. Customer Mapping Systems to Understand Buyers Journey
First of all, in order to optimize your omni-channel experiences, you need to know which devices and platforms your target audience use during each phase of the buyer’s journey.
Most marketers tend to
attribute a sale based on the “last click” – but this does not really give you
a full picture of the pathway to a conversion.
The modern path from brand
introduction to conversion is no longer linear; in most cases, customers will
interact with a business up
to eight separate times
before they are ready to buy. So, in order to create an accurate buyer’s
journey for your specific target audience, you will need to use some deep
analytical tools.
Finteza is a helpful tool that will help you understand which channels drive the best traffic. It also features an in-depth audience analysis that allows you to evaluate the full spectrum of your customers with important data – like their geographical location and the devices they are using on your website.
This
system can make it far easier for your team to know where to get started in
terms of optimization. Once you know your most popular channels, you can start
to look for ways to improve these experiences. For instance, say that your
mobile traffic numbers are extremely high and are coming from social platforms
like Facebook and Instagram.
With
this knowledge, you should place more focus on improving your mobile UX and
optimizing your marketing campaigns around these social channels.
Understanding who your
audience is is the first step to creating an experience that matches up to
their expectations. Consumer behavioral data that is based on your specific
audience’s interactions sheds a light on the areas of your omni-channel
experience that need optimization.
TAKE-AWAY: Your prospects are on a journey. Responsibly collected data about the sources they use to visit/re-visit your site is a great starting point for your Omnichannel optimization efforts. Go for the low-hanging fruits, prove the ROI of improving Omnichannel drives and then invest fully into making it a consistent practice.
2. Personalization Tools to Deliver Just the Right Context in the Right Way
There is little doubt that
personalization is incredibly important to the modern consumer and should go
hand-in-hand with omni-channel optimization.
But personalization for a single channel often proves challenging enough. There is the question of what is too much and potentially privacy invading!
In the Omnichannel world, the stakes go higher. How can you take information about their preferences on one device/medium and use it to truly facilitate their interactions with your brand on others?
For instance, cookies from
your website can identify a returning customer and send personalized product
recommendations based on their past product views. But what if they are
searching on a mobile phone instead? Or how about when they enter a physical
location?
Obviously, Big Data is going to play a critical role in this situation to not only identify a customer, but to also instantly personalize their interactions across all channels.
For example, say that a
specific customer had previously purchased a pair of running shoes from your
online store. Clearly, this customer is interested in exercise, so that
information can be applied to personalize their future interactions.
This data can be used to
create targeted recommendations that feature running related products.
What’s more, some of the 1-on-1
personalization solutions out there also ensure that the
ads/recommendations are tailored to the device the users are on for maximum
chances of engagement.
A larger clickable area for
less agile fingers on mobile, easier log ins and log outs, a single shopping
cart across devices … they are just the beginning.
Amazon is a master of this tactic. And has been doing it discreetly for a while with its own personalization and recommendations engine.
And finally, if customers
chose to interact at a physical location, their customer account data can be
used to help the sales executives understand what information would be most
relevant in their situation.
TAKE-AWAY: Omnichannel without personalization is only half the battle won. Those who can deliver the right information, at the right time to the right channel while keeping the branding consistent will be well on their way to leaving competitors behind.
3. Customer Service Tools that Start Human Conversations Across Channels
If you’ve ever called in to a customer service line for a large company you know that your experience can vary greatly depending on who picks the phone. One representative may be very friendly and accommodating, while another may be anything but helpful.
Customer support is another key component to a great CX and it must be optimized for omni-channel consumerism as well. Customers want to know that help is only a click away, irrespective of the medium they are interacting from.
According
to one study,
customers claimed that the ability to contact a business through any channel has
the greatest influence on a consumer’s sentiment towards the brand.
Talkdesk is a cloud-based communication service that is designed to create a modern omni-channel support system allowing customers to choose how they want to interact with a brand. Talkdesk offers numerous solutions to handle interactions across virtually all channels – and it can be easily integrated with systems like Salesforce and Zendesk to keep customer data organized.
You can even program your
own chatbot directly through Talkdesk to personalize mobile and desktop
interactions based on collected consumer data.
If a customer asks the
chatbot a question and then decides to speak to a support member directly, the
information is passed on to the rep for a smooth transition from AI to human.
For example, Sephora’s chatbot is designed to do double duty as both a sales and customer service rep. Customers can submit questions or learn more about various products through their interactions, but they can also request to be connected with the customer service department if needed. The chatbot will then relay the interaction on to the appropriate department.
TAKE-AWAY: Support is a verb. And it needs to be seamless and active across each channel of the Omnichannel gamut to ensure that resistances are tackled and negated appropriately and quickly.
The Wrap
83{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa}
of consumers are willing to share data with a company if they know it
will enhance their experience.
So you do have enough data points to start your Omnichannel improvement drive. The keyword is being “responsible” about the collection, storing and processing of this information.
GDPR is not just for Europe… and you can follow a handful of basic best practices to make sure that your channels are amped for conversions, but not data misuse.
Going Omni is essential… where are you?
