Customers today are used to getting exactly what they want when they want it.
Receiving personalized email recommendations for newly released shows on Netflix, interacting with an Apple specialist online and then opting for curb-side delivery, asking Alexa to buy a product based on a suggestion received on the Amazon mobile app—tech giants are raising the bar for customer expectations every now and then. To implement and execute a truly omni-channel strategy, companies must rethink how they engage with customers demanding anytime, anywhere, any device services. However, research shows that 82% of businesses are not delivering frictionless customer experiences.
Curating hyper-personalized experiences along the entire customer journey and across channels is crucial to stand out amid the digital noise and secure loyalty, grow revenue and improve bottom lines. So, how can businesses achieve a truly integrated omni-channel experience? This paper discusses how a platform with a system of intelligence (SoI) layer and enterprise orchestration capabilities connecting every system and channel can bring organizations closer to this goal.
By supporting real-time interaction management (RTIM), a unified platform can deliver contextually relevant customer experiences across all channels of engagement. This is effected by anticipating customer needs, prescribing the next best-action, and automating decision-making.
Netflix started as a DVD-by-mail rental service, and today it is the world’s leading subscription streaming service with over 200-million paid subscribers.
A hyper focus on the customer, which they call consumer science, has been vital to their success. The company uses a scientific methodology to form and test hypotheses, discover what delights customers, and then use that to craft an ultra-tailored and seamless experience.
When it comes to personalization across channels, Sephora is a leader in the retail space. It leverages an omni-channel strategy which links offers and other communications across e-mail, web and mobile, allowing the brand to drive engagement on a channel the customers prefer.
Customers gravitate toward and stick to brands that offer consistent, highly relevant experiences with every interaction. According to a Salesforce study, over 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations, and yet feel they are treated like mere numbers. With digital disruption, customers are becoming even more selective in the way they engage with brands. But more importantly, they are demanding a seamless experience across channels. About 74% of customers have used multiple channels to start and complete a transaction. That’s not all — nearly 76% of customers choose the channel depending on the context of the message.
Context is at the core of exceptional omni-channel customer experiences as shown in Figure 1. Contextual intelligence leverages insights from multiple sources, such as personal information as well as purchase and interaction history to offer exactly what customers need, on any channel. However, a Gartner report predicts that about 80% of marketers would have abandoned their personalization efforts by 2025, due to lack of returns on investment (ROI).
For many brands, personalized campaigns fall below expectations because they lack context, and therefore fail to deliver meaningful, relevant ‘in-the-moment’ experiences.
There is no single solution for harnessing the power of contextual intelligence.
It requires a holistic approach, which includes creating a 360-degree view of data across internal and customer-facing systems, realigning processes to the customer journey and leveraging the right platform to make insights available to people across the organization. Here are some questions businesses can ask to see if their omni-channel strategy is truly seamless:
Can a customer dispute an invoice on the web and then get a response in real time?
Some of the key barriers to providing an integrated and contextual omni-channel experience are:
Inability to track customer interactions across enterprise systems
Siloed systems and fragmented data can make it difficult to track customer interactions and insights from past transactions. Many organizations typically maintain systems of records to capture customer issues and resolutions instead of recording and tagging every unique engagement. This limits channel rendering and real-time availability of actionable insights across the customer journey.
Business processes supported by legacy enterprise architecture
The ownership of ‘channels of interaction’ will determine how it is designed and rendered. In many cases, marketing teams prioritize cost reduction over an operational view of services for each channel. In addition, embedding business processes and logic inside IT systems means that every small change in the business flow will require corresponding changes across multiple systems. A rigid enterprise architecture with legacy systems can make such changes time-consuming, forcing business to compromise on customer experience.
Dependency on human intervention
Business process design and knowledge management tools are still largely people dependent. Reliance on sales, customer support or marketing teams to stitch together customer interactions, can have a negative impact on the consistency that customers crave today.
Bridging the omni-channel gap through a system of intelligence layer
The above-mentioned challenges necessitate the addition of an SoI layer to offer contextual and personalized experiences across channels. Given below is a three-step process to bridge the omnichannel gap and deliver truly transformative customer experiences:
Simplifying and automating customer engagement with contextual intelligence
Enterprises spend approximately 20-50% in assisted care channels to understand and analyze service requests, before coming up with resolutions. To improve response efficiency in an omnichannel environment, a holistic view of customer interactions, intent and context must be available. A digital SoI layer, which connects upstream (channel data) and downstream systems (systems of records) and processes across the organization, can bring in business abstraction without compromising on agility and time-to-market. Over time, changes required in business processes can be implemented on this layer instead of the base systems themselves, thereby reducing IT expenditures and undue delays.
The SoI layer provides the necessary framework for business teams to define and redefine processes with minimal or no technical intervention. It also becomes simpler to integrate digital and legacy investments, offering enterprises the ability to combine automation with a human touch when required. For example, by adding on this digital layer, enterprises can improve customer service KPIs (key performance indicators) across assisted, unassisted and self-service channels.
Extending abstraction across all channels
The next step is extending the SoI layer across customer touchpoints for enabling business logic extraction. This will help optimize the deliberate diversion to another channel, based on business requirements or customer prerogatives. Channels serve as the lens through which organizations can follow and resume customer journeys. More importantly, customers can interact with a channel of their choice and convenience instead of shifting to one that provides a specific type of resolution. As the SoI layer provides the proper context to customer interactions, enterprises can also quickly deliver ‘first-contact resolutions’ and ‘next-best actions’ across channels.
Enabling proactive and predictive capabilities
Predictive analytics can unlock the transformational power of the SoI layer—from real-time interaction management to proactive resolution of issues. It helps improve customer experience in addition to reducing dependency on sales and support staff and lowering opex. Furthermore, enterprises can use predictive insights to reach out to customers meaningfully while exploring upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
Brands that listen win across channels
When it comes to customer centricity, it can sometimes seem that customers have all the control, because they can walk away any time they want. And it’s true, they can. According to a McKinsey report, over 39% of consumers have either changed brands or retailers, and close to 79% of those intend to continue exploring other options.
However, with a contextual intelligence layer embedded across systems and processes, businesses can engage with customers by taking the lead and being proactive. They can use insights from every customer interaction to define the next step and positively influence how the customer interacts with them. Brands should be in the driving seat and listen closely to customers who are invited along for the ride. This way both sides can have a smooth and seamless omni-channel journey.
Cloud-based platform that enables subscription businesses to roll out digital services at scale.
A digital twin-based simulator to envision, experiment, and execute business decisions.
An intelligent system that leverages an organization’s existing technology capabilities to deliver purpose-driven customer engagement.
