Why is Omnichannel Customer Experience Important?
As important as customer experience is, it goes on developing day-by-day. The word in the market is out for a new and fairly unexplored area of Omnichannel Customer Experience.
Surveys by Aspect Software have shown that adopting an Omnichannel strategy has helped businesses to increase their customer retention by 91%. That’s clearly not a small number.
But how is this happening?
What Omnichannel meaning is?
Why is Omnichannel Marketing in such a buzz today?
What makes Omnichannel Customer Experience different from ordinary CX?
And most importantly how to create a good Omnichannel strategy?
Quite inquisitive! All these questions must be answered to get the best out of Omnichannel Customer Experience. But first, let’s understand what Omnichannel meaning is…
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel Marketing is the method of creating brand reach on multiple channels to generate an easy and personalized Customer Experience. With this, customers can access the brand over multiple platforms like a physical store, e-commerce site, website, mobile app, social media, etc.
However, using multiple channels for creating an Omnichannel Customer Journey doesn’t mean that the marketing efforts across these channels are independently triggered.
Rather, the concept of Omnichannel Marketing is to create such marketing messaging that unify the multiple channels and create the ultimate unique Customer Experience. So it is Multichannel but unified.
Still, confused? Let’s discuss Omnichannel vs Multichannel deeply to learn more…
Omnichannel vs Multichannel: The Difference!
Omnichannel Marketing seems similar to Multichannel Marketing, but that’s not the case. Multichannel Marketing expands your marketing efforts across multiple channels, each working in a vacuum.
All the different platforms are independent of one another and have individual goals. There is no integration amongst them, which creates confusion and ambiguity about the clarity of the message.
Omnichannel Marketing is similar to Multichannel Marketing to the extent that it also uses multiple channels to capture the customer’s attention. However, the messaging remains constant.
The goal is consistent across all channels: to make the Customer Journey as easy as possible!
No matter where or how the customer interacts with you, they get the same experience throughout. Omnichannel Customer Experience is focused on the customer rather than the individual channel.
Knowing the Omnichannel vs Multichannel differences, the question next in line is why Omnichannel Customer Experience is important? And how can it transform your business?
Why Omnichannel Customer Experience?
Omnichannel vs Multichannel war highlights one important aspect of Omnichannel Customer Experience, it focuses on creating a unified experience for customers across all channels.
And there are multiple benefits to this:
Seamless and Consistent Omnichannel Customer Experience
The Omnichannel strategy helps in creating an effortless customer journey as the customer can continue wherever they are left from any channel they choose!
For instance, Omnichannel e-commerce is used by McDonald’s where you can order a McBurger online and collect it from the offline store on your way back home.
You don’t need to order again offline! According to UC Today, the Omnichannel Customer Expectations of 9 out of 10 customers is to achieve such seamless customer service across all channels.
Reduces Customer Frustration
Customers do not prefer going through the same process again and again. According to Accenture, 89% of customers get frustrated when they are made to repeat their issues across channels.
And this frustration can be avoided using an Omnichannel Customer Journey that transfers customer concerns from one channel to another without getting them involved.
Increases Customer Retention
When the process becomes easier, customers tend to return more often. After all, who likes hassle when comfort is available. This is why companies with a good Omnichannel Customer Journey Map are able to retain 89% of their customers, according to Aberdeen Group.
Fulfills Omnichannel Customer Expectations
Customers today are very flexible in their choice of channel. From a survey by Harvard Business Review, it was deduced that 73% of customers today use multiple channels for interacting with a brand.
This means the Omnichannel Customer Expectations have increased today more than ever. Customers can be satisfied only by helping them effortlessly communicate with your brand over multiple channels.
Connecting Offline to Online
Omnichannel Customer Experience is a great way to interlink the offline and online platforms. Smartphones are a constant guide for consumers today. 71% of shoppers use the internet to research a product before purchasing it online or offline.
According to Google Think, it has become an important part of their Omnichannel Customer Expectations. Brands can and should use this to their advantage wherever possible.
Fuller Utilization of Online Traffic
Online is the new marketplace. According to Statista, more than 50% of online website traffic gets generated by mobile users. This means 50% of your audience is online.
A good marketing strategy would require using this channel to its fullest in multiple ways to capture your user, even if your product is sold via a brick and mortar shop.
Edging Competition
Omnichannel Customer Experience is a fairly new concept, still, 89% of companies consider it to be critical to their success.
A strong method to meet Omnichannel Customer Expectations can create a 9.5% hike in your annual revenue and reduce costs by 7.5% according to V12 Data. With such great stats, you can edge any competition easily!
The benefits of Omnichannel Marketing are not at all limited to the few above. But to reap them, you need to learn how to improve Omnichannel Customer Experience.
The McKinsey Omnichannel Customer Experience can surely be of help…
The Perfect Omnichannel Strategy
Omnichannel strategy can be quite tricky to make. Thankfully, the McKinsey Omnichannel Customer Experience model helps to generalize the process for creating an Omnichannel Customer Journey Map.
The McKinsey Omnichannel Customer Experience model has 3 steps:
- Identify the various cross-channel journeys to be included in your Omnichannel Customer Journey Map:
While analyzing the different channels your customers use in their journey, there are 2 dimensions to take care of — their propensity to use a particular channel and the importance of that journey for them. Accordingly, a matrix with 4 quadrants can be created as follows:
The organization must concentrate on ways to improve the channels in the upper right section of the matrix.
2. Designing personalized experiences for each important cross-channel to meet the omnichannel customer expectations:
After analyzing the prior matrix to know the most important channels that customers frequently use, organizations must create strategies to effectively improve the performance of such channels. This will create greater comfort and make it easy for the customers to move ahead in their customer journey.
3. Create a customer-centric approach throughout the organization:
Lastly, to embed Omnichannel Customer Experience in your customer journey, it is needed that the organization must become customer-centric at its very core. The employees at all levels must have one goal in mind — how to personalize Customer Experience? And only then can the ideas flow. This will also make it possible to avoid resistance to change and make it easier to create personalized customer journeys.
Let’s understand Omnichannel Customer Experience with an example…
Starbucks Omnichannel Strategy: A Case Study
Starbucks Omnichannel strategy is one of the most talked-about Omnichannel case-study. There’s no doubt Starbucks is present across multiple channels. The intriguing thing is the way its various channels are weaved together.
The Starbucks Omnichannel process starts with a customer visiting the physical shop to experience the exclusive Starbucks aura.
After the first purchase, the customer gets automatically subscribed to the Starbucks newsletter which brings in new offers every month. A customer may at any time opt-out from the newsletter.
However, if they avail a few offers from the newsletters they get prompts for the Starbucks Reward scheme.
This Reward system is the premium most level of the Starbucks Omnichannel Strategy which offers multiple discounts, omnichannel e-commerce for online orders, no queue waitings, and a seamless Omnichannel Customer Experience!
The Bottom Line…
Omnichannel Customer Experience is the new normal of CX. Customers operate across multiple channels and expect your presence there.
They want to be able to seamlessly switch different platforms and continue from where they left. And Omnichannel strategy helps you achieve this. But remember, the Omnichannel vs Multichannel differences and take the right decisions!
