{"id":9304,"date":"2016-07-28T20:36:58","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T20:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/?p=9304"},"modified":"2016-07-28T20:48:16","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T20:48:16","slug":"your-customer-experience-should-become-channel-agnostic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/your-customer-experience-should-become-channel-agnostic\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Customer Experience Should Become Channel-Agnostic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The boundaries between digital and physical are now increasingly blurring, especially in B2C with its intense pace and volume of customer interactions that spill over multiple channels.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a large portion of these B2C interactions happen in the absence of a sales representative as such, customers\u2019 independent experience with brands becomes everything. Still, as B2C enterprises are trying to find their balance in this digitally disrupted world, the risk of falling into the brand new version of Levitt\u2019s marketing myopia is pretty high.<\/p>\n

Marketing myopia revisited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Half a century earlier, Theodore Levitt coined marketing myopia<\/em> as a catchphrase standing for a company\u2019s inability to recognize customer needs beyond the narrow focus on what<\/em> to sell, not to whom<\/em> and how<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Today, it can be reinterpreted as a common misunderstanding that customers predominantly use one channel, either traditional or digital. But the stats show it\u2019s the age of continuous service now. With 90 (!) percent of customers expecting consistent cross-channel interactions with brands (SDL via DM News<\/em>), 61 percent still fail to switch between channels successfully (Aspect<\/em>). As B2C audiences grow ever more impatient, any case of interrupted communication means losing a potential customer as well as reducing the lifetime value of the existing customer base by 30 percent (IDC<\/em>).<\/p>\n

This cracks open an unexpected question \u2013 is it really about disintegration of departments that are supposed to be mutually responsible for the holistic customer experience but instead never see anything beyond their narrow area of responsibilities? As a result, there are 2 traps to fall into:<\/p>\n

Trap No. 1<\/em> \u2013 placing too heavy an emphasis on digital-less<\/em> customer experience such as in-store experience, offline customer service, delivery, etc. and overlooking digital whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Trap No. 2<\/em> \u2013 focusing on the digital channels of the day (web, mobile, wearables, etc.) but never considering other departments as instrumental in customer experience.<\/p>\n

Comes as a surprise but avoiding these traps includes realizing that\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026Every touchpoint matters, and CRM is their meeting place<\/strong><\/p>\n

Digital marketers are all marketers, but not all marketers are digital, right? Also, marketers per se have only a limited control over the customer lifecycle, frequently with no visibility into stages other than acts of purchase. Who owns customer experience then?<\/p>\n

The problem mostly lies in the misalignment of goals and missions when everyone acts independently without a single silo that could connect all these disintegrated layers. Meanwhile, end-to-end customer experience management takes cross-department coordination, which belongs to a larger discipline of software-enabled Customer Relationship Management (CRM).<\/p>\n\"Digital\n

As proved by our most recent customer experience management<\/a>\u00a0observations, customers have become channel-agnostic. That\u2019s said, it\u2019s only possible to meet their expectations of consistent cross-channel experience<\/strong> when its management overcomes either \u2018physical\u2019 or \u2018digital\u2019 bias and makes pinpointed changes at every touchpoint possible. Needless to say, every channel-specific experience is each only a fraction of this picture.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

Darya Yafimava is Customer Experience Observer\u00a0at ScienceSoft<\/a>, a software development and consulting company headquartered in McKinney, TX. With her 4+ years in business and tech writing, Darya has contributed to a number of tech and business platforms with a special focus on CRM\/CXM and retail IT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CRM consulting practitioners rethink short-sighted marketing concepts to prove that holistic customer experience management goes beyond any single channel..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9304"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9319,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9304\/revisions\/9319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}