Taking care of customer needs and building meaningful emotional connections are essential parts of successful customer-brand interaction. Yet positive user engagement can only be achieved through cohesive and consistent experiences across multiple touchpoints. And that’s where omnichannel CX plays a crucial role —seamlessly connecting customer needs and providing 90% higher customer retention.
In part one of our Design for Impact blog series, we’ve discussed the essentials for meeting the CX imperative in 2023. Today, let’s dive into the omnichannel world, proactively making its way beyond retail and e-commerce only, and discuss the must-haves for designing impactful omnichannel experiences.
The Five Pillars of CX
Over 43% of consumers say the ability to contact the company through any channel is the number one driver for feeling emotionally connected to a brand.
Although many companies have tried implementing an omnichannel strategy, few have succeeded in building a comprehensive customer experience. With the emergence of new interaction possibilities, experiences are becoming more dynamically connected than ever. And those who focus on customers and view touchpoints not in isolation, but as part of a seamless customer journey will reap the most value.
For this, companies engage Experience Design professionals to assess and transform their customer experiences based on the following criteria:
- Consistent
Providing cohesive experiences across all channels. - Optimized
Creating individualized channel experiences ideally suited for a particular device, content, and channel constraints. - Seamless
Ensuring effortless channel transitions, allowing customers to pick up where they left off as they switch between channels. - Orchestrated
Guiding customers through their journeys with the right personalized content, at the right times. - Collaborative
Enriching the customer journey by allowing customers to benefit from multiple channels simultaneously, hence improving their overall experience.
Human-Centricity at the Heart of CX
Over 60% of consumers expect businesses to care more about them and, most importantly, they’d buy more as a result.
Omnichannel CX should revolve around the customers—their behaviors, needs, and expectations—placing customer-centricity at the heart of every interaction. By researching the current state, mapping and understanding the user journeys, needs, and communicating business impact, UX design professionals ultimately build experiences that satisfy customer expectations across channels.
Companies with strong omnichannel engagement retain on average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for those who don’t prioritize it.
However, great omnichannel experience goes beyond researching needs and designing holistic customer journeys. It requires a shift in mindset throughout the organization—from the C-suite down to the customer support level. This means organizing teams around these journeys and breaking down silos to adopt an agile mindset that quickly reveals customer concerns.
Such cross-functional alignment will act as a catalyst for successful omnichannel transformation and empower key stakeholders with the right insights for increased customer engagement.
Centralizing Omnichannel CX Efforts
The customer journey usually consists of around 20-30 touchpoints with a brand before it gets to the purchasing decision. And in multichannel environments, data is often spread across numerous systems, making it difficult for stakeholders to access it and get a complete picture of the customers. To connect the dots, businesses need to consolidate customer data within a single shared space (system), ensuring it is accessible to relevant parties.
The functionality of such a system, its accessibility, and capacity to store data from multiple channels all facilitate the process of setting up and delivering a frictionless omnichannel experience. This allows stakeholders to have better visibility of the end-to-end customer journey and ultimately provide the desired level of convenience, personalization, and engagement at each touchpoint.
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Customer journeys are becoming increasingly dynamic and sophisticated. Leading brands already deliver excellent omnichannel CX and now customers expect it from almost every company they interact with.
For this, businesses need to embrace a customer-centric omnichannel mindset and expand the scope of their UX efforts to address the unmet customer needs. With a holistic, design-first approach in place, companies can see their business through the eyes of their customers and deliver seamless, fast, and desirable experiences across channels.
Are you ready to prioritize omnichannel in 2023?
Do you have the right insights and team to provide a seamless and desirable CX?
Let’s chat about how our Experience Design team can help.
