In its white paper titled, “Sequencing the Omnichannel Customer Conversation,” Opus Research found that every consumer’s journey is unique, but ensuring a seamless customer experience in every channel remains paramount.
“The journey is unique for each company’s customers,” the white paper says. “However, we can see some strong indications that traditional channels such as phone, websites, email, and physical stores continue to be an important first touch part of the customer experience. We also see digital channels becoming increasing important, consistent with company goals and strategies.”
Here are some of the highlights of the white paper:
A shift to digital and mobile CX is underway: Purchasing and implementation plans recognize that physical stores, contact centers, websites, and outbound marketing strategies have a growing digital component.
Spending on CX initiatives is on an upswing: Over 90% of respondents say that they expect investments to increase in the coming year. That spans all verticals under investigation.
Classic channels and communications modes have staying power: When looking at a “single channel,” email and phone predominate, while websites, social media, mobile apps and physical stores figure into roughly one-half of all engagements.
As customers take control, groupings have emerged: Examples include “Digital Denizens” (Phone, Corporate Website, Email); “O2O Aficionados” (Email, Website, Retail Stores), and “Showroomers” (Retail Stores, Webchat, Website).
Conflicting priorities govern acquisition plans: Respondents attached equal weights to a set of well-known priorities, including “lower customer effort,” “improving security and trust,” “aligning departmental goals,” “providing a differentiated experience,” and “leveraging analytics to optimize engagement.”
Heightened spending to address new challenges: High priorities were indicated for leveraging predictive analytics to anticipate customer intent, maintaining customer context across devices and channels, and improving self-service and automation rates.
Here is a brief description of each of the customer groups:
The Digital Herd: Because email, phone, and websites are the most often cite primary channels of engagement (all scoring 90% and above), it is clear that they figure prominently in the age of digital commerce. Retailers, financial services companies, insurance brokers, and healthcare providers know from experience that their customers, clients, or patients are employing combinations of The Big Three to maintain communications over time.
Opus Research argues that, given the high spam-to-substance ratio in everyone’s inbox, email is losing its luster. Yet, it remains the most commonly used direct channel for delivering marketing messages, product promotions and person-to-person messages. To an increasing degree, marketing emails contain links that go directly to a corporate website or a landing page with relevant information to keep a conversation going and propel individuals directly to a place where they can carry out a purchase or get a question answered. At that point, customers or prospects can complete their assigned tasks and move on.
O2O Aficionados: Email is often a trigger for action in a brick-and-mortar retail outlet. That makes it the starting off point for “online-2-offine” (O2O) activities. For instance, targeted email may contain “offers” that site specials that are either displayed in a retailer’s website or available directly from a physical store. It is becoming common for individuals to do their research online before heading to a storefront to make a purchase and bring an item home. In a financial services situation, a company could make an offer over email, suggest a visit to a web site for more detail, and then recommend a visit to a broker to resolve any issues and complete a transaction.
Showroomers: “Showrooming” is the bane of today’s retail chains. Store managers at Best Buy, for instance, know that people are using trips to the store as an opportunity to see, feel, and touch merchandise before they go to Amazon.com or elsewhere to make a purchase at a lower price. This has
elevated “anti-Showrooming” tactics to the fore, making prudent use of analytics informed by social media monitoring and location awareness a crucial part of the marketing plans for all retailers trying to combat unfair competition.
Social Flutterby’s: Judicious use of social media monitoring, text messaging and email may be the perfect counter-measure to Showrooming. Millennials, in general, are thought to be susceptible to suggestions from the people they have selected as “friends” or “influencers” on suggested social networks. The friends who are just a few messages or tweets away are also major contributors in this form of commercial conversation. Both brands and retailers must figure out how to get into these diverse talk-paths in order to influence the outcomes.
Mobile Mavens: his cluster is especially interesting in the “mobile first” era. As smartphones proliferate and billions of individuals are never more than a few feet from their mobile phones, enterprise efforts to keep in constant contact with Mobile Mavens is shaping the future of commercial conversations. In this instance, we see mobile phones and mobile apps playing the key role as individuals initiate a search and seek to get information or complete a transaction. In this instance, we also see that social networks, accessed through apps or through mobile browsers have a role to play. For businesses who want to succeed with this cohort, the prime directive is to “be everywhere they want to be.”
The Edgy Customers: These may be total outliers, but they may also be the early warning system for the direction that more customers conversations will follow. After many years of languishing in the technology wilderness, smartphones have put video in billions of individuals’ hands. Investment in public kiosks, resembling ATMs but delivering many more services, such as direct video contact with ta financial adviser or technician, has been growing. SMS/text may not be the right connective fabric here (but we didn’t ask about MMS or some of the multimedia variations of texting).