Most businesses today have a website, some have a mobile app, almost all have some kind of print folder and lots and lots still have brick and mortar stores. What most don’t have, however, is something to tie all these channels together to create an integrated customer experience: an omnichannel approach. But what does it really take to ‘be omnichannel’, and can your business benefit from it too?
First, let’s talk about what omnichannel isn’t: it is not the same as multichannel. In fact, most companies today are multichannel, but very few are omnichannel. This means that the experience they offer their clients across different platforms isn’t seamless. For example, if customers put items in their shopping cart on the mobile app, they don’t show up on the website. Or: the price of a product is different in-store and in the webshop.
What it comes down to, is a deep level of integration between sales channels, both digital and real-life, that allows the business to identify and seize the customer’s ‘moments of intent’: the exact moments where he or she decides to interact with your company. Unlocking these moments of intent is the goal of a successful omnichannel strategy.
Fix the basics
The most important prerequisite to creating a seamless omnichannel experience is access to a uniform dataset or ‘single source of truth’, like a customer profile. This also includes a Digital Asset Management and/or Product Information Management system.
Access to a single source of truth allows you to share and retrieve the consistent, up-to-date information across different channels and devices, and gives you a valuable way to seize ‘the moment of intent’.
There is no silver bullet
And then there’s the bad news: while getting the basics right is paramount, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’-solution to going.
What works for your organization and how you should go about it depends on many things: what you’re selling, who your customers are, how digitally mature your company is, and what exactly a ‘conversion’ is for you.
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