Customer relationships are the foundational building blocks of a high-performance organization. Brands that intentionally design their experience to ensure that each individual interaction ends positively are contributing to happy consumers, but also to a system that encourages overall growth. However, in the modern business climate, this responsibility has expanded more than ever before. These interactions and relationships are spread across more than the traditional channels, and each of these avenues can affect your team’s ability to curate long-term customer relationships. For a successful omnichannel Customer Experience program, employees need to sift through and expertly analyze a large amount of information. If your brand is not already working with an omnichannel expert, you may be missing out on opportunities that directly impact your customer acquisition and retention capabilities.
Omnichannel Customer Experience is the concept of creating consistency across all these different channels available to customers. 87% of consumers believe that brands need to put forth more of an effort to create a seamless experience,[1] meaning that whether they interact with your brand via social media, in-store employees or a call-center, the same level and style of service should be present. The key to capturing this consistency is to continuously measure the way each individual process is performing and create a vast collection of data that can be used to influence steady improvement. Applying measurement programs like mystery shopping and brand reputation monitoring can help you capture this customer perception data and, depending on which vendor you choose to help collect this data, this information can help determine appropriate action priorities.
Like any other organizational aspect, a great omnichannel experience requires a specific strategy before implementation. Without an established goal, it will be much more difficult to train employees to reach this desired level of consistency. There is a common belief that in the next three years, a great Customer Experience will overtake price and product as the main differentiator for success,[2] and an omnichannel strategy is a huge contributor to a great overall experience. While approximately 2/3 of brands apply this responsibility of program management to their CMOs,[3] ideally, there is a separate team under that leadership responsible for measuring, understanding and improving the level of consistency applied across channels within your typical customer journey.
Ideally, anytime a customer comes into contact with their brand, it is pushing them further towards brand ambassadorship. Organizations that are leaders in this space will have efforts to attract new customers, but ultimately it is cementing a great relationship with existing customers that will have a greater impact. In fact, it is estimated that acquiring new customers costs about six times more than retaining existing patrons,[4] meaning that the focus of your CX platform should be maintaining a high level of value-provided throughout the typical journey to purchase. Designating a third-party to monitor your omnichannel capabilities will grant you an unbiased picture of how customers perceive your brand, and ideally serve as a catapult launching you along the path to become an omnichannel industry leader.
In the modern landscape, organizations with an inconsistent omnichannel strategy have subpar retention levels hovering around 33%. Meanwhile, effective omnichannel engagement leads to brands retaining an excellent 89% of existing customers.[5] In the game of customer retention, there is no skill more necessary than providing this level of consistency, making it essential that your brand is making the proper investments so that it is capturing the right information that leads to the correct changes. Organizations that partner with a third-party Customer Experience expert to measure and improve their existing abilities are positioning their omnichannel strategy to become a high-performance aspect of their brand structure, ultimately resulting in better individual interactions, longer customer relationships, more brand ambassadors and a better overall perception of the brand itself.
1 https://d16cvnquvjw7pr.cloudfront.net/resources/whitepapers/Omnichannel-Customer-Service-Gap.pdf
2,4 https://customerthink.com/15-vital-customer-experience-statistics-for-2018/
3 https://www.forrester.com/report/The+Evolved+CMO+In+2016/-/E-RES119909
5 https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2013/12/31/why-omnichannel-strategy-matters/
