CEM – Transformation and omnichannel
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 8:54 am
Professor of Customer Experience Management at the Universidad del Pacífico and Analytics & Shopper Insights Director at Neurometrics.
Today's customer is a person with great exposure to technology and the speed that this brings with it. They are customers who look for brands and companies to make their lives easier and not waste time on procedures or processes that are irrelevant to them. They are impatient customers who look for brands to adjust to them.
When your business model is structured with bc data taiwan your own efficiency as a company in mind and with processes that seek to obtain the greatest possible value from the customer “at all costs,” it is a business model that is destined not to survive.
Blockbuster, for example, underestimated the rapid advances that technology was experiencing at the time, and thought that customers would always prefer to go to a physical location to choose the film and release that they most wanted to see; and also established quite harsh policies for customers, such as paying high late fees for late returns of films.
Netflix, for its part, not only broke with that business model, initially proposing to send movies by delivery and for an indefinite period of time, without delays for missing a certain return date; but it also demonstrated that the “long tail” model worked and was profitable, capturing a significant mass of customers with movies that were not new releases or well known to everyone.
Multichannel means making several distribution and/or contact channels available to the customer so that they can choose the one they consider most convenient; however, being a multichannel company today is clearly not enough. Companies are beginning to notice the importance of being an omnichannel company, understanding the customer experience that moves from one channel to another as a unique, consistent and continuous experience.
The customer is looking for a product or service from a brand, not from a particular channel; therefore, whether they interact with one channel or another, they should be able to receive the same level of attention, information, and have a continuous experience. It doesn’t sound strange to us, for example, to call a company’s call center to request certain information and after having validated your data and explained your need, receive a response like “no sir, you can’t do that over the phone; you must go to an office in person,” file a complaint via a company’s social media page and after more than 48 hours receive a response to your message with a comment like “I’m sorry sir, but you must call the call center to file your complaint or to get the information you need,” or be literally bombarded by companies offering you their products or services because when you told the first person who contacted you that you weren’t interested, that information didn’t travel to the company but stayed on that channel and with that person who made the contact.
Customers today interact with more than one channel at a time and if companies are not structurally prepared to comprehensively manage these Customer Journeys, they will not be able to remain competitive over time.
Major retail chains are working hard to integrate their channels in order to provide this omnichannel experience . For example, Macy's, a North American department store chain, is aware that many of its customers start the search process through their cell phone or website app and then go to one of its stores to try on the item before buying it. It is beginning to rethink how its organizational structure should be. It integrates its commercial channels as one, where it does not matter if the purchase is online or offline. It manages a single inventory and an integrated information system that guarantees that physical stores have stocks of what is listed on their online platforms, thus breaking the traditional structures of separate online sales and in-store sales areas.
Today's customer is a person with great exposure to technology and the speed that this brings with it. They are customers who look for brands and companies to make their lives easier and not waste time on procedures or processes that are irrelevant to them. They are impatient customers who look for brands to adjust to them.
When your business model is structured with bc data taiwan your own efficiency as a company in mind and with processes that seek to obtain the greatest possible value from the customer “at all costs,” it is a business model that is destined not to survive.
Blockbuster, for example, underestimated the rapid advances that technology was experiencing at the time, and thought that customers would always prefer to go to a physical location to choose the film and release that they most wanted to see; and also established quite harsh policies for customers, such as paying high late fees for late returns of films.
Netflix, for its part, not only broke with that business model, initially proposing to send movies by delivery and for an indefinite period of time, without delays for missing a certain return date; but it also demonstrated that the “long tail” model worked and was profitable, capturing a significant mass of customers with movies that were not new releases or well known to everyone.
Multichannel means making several distribution and/or contact channels available to the customer so that they can choose the one they consider most convenient; however, being a multichannel company today is clearly not enough. Companies are beginning to notice the importance of being an omnichannel company, understanding the customer experience that moves from one channel to another as a unique, consistent and continuous experience.
The customer is looking for a product or service from a brand, not from a particular channel; therefore, whether they interact with one channel or another, they should be able to receive the same level of attention, information, and have a continuous experience. It doesn’t sound strange to us, for example, to call a company’s call center to request certain information and after having validated your data and explained your need, receive a response like “no sir, you can’t do that over the phone; you must go to an office in person,” file a complaint via a company’s social media page and after more than 48 hours receive a response to your message with a comment like “I’m sorry sir, but you must call the call center to file your complaint or to get the information you need,” or be literally bombarded by companies offering you their products or services because when you told the first person who contacted you that you weren’t interested, that information didn’t travel to the company but stayed on that channel and with that person who made the contact.
Customers today interact with more than one channel at a time and if companies are not structurally prepared to comprehensively manage these Customer Journeys, they will not be able to remain competitive over time.
Major retail chains are working hard to integrate their channels in order to provide this omnichannel experience . For example, Macy's, a North American department store chain, is aware that many of its customers start the search process through their cell phone or website app and then go to one of its stores to try on the item before buying it. It is beginning to rethink how its organizational structure should be. It integrates its commercial channels as one, where it does not matter if the purchase is online or offline. It manages a single inventory and an integrated information system that guarantees that physical stores have stocks of what is listed on their online platforms, thus breaking the traditional structures of separate online sales and in-store sales areas.