We have more customer data than ever before. Doesn’t it follow that we should have a deeper understanding of our customers than ever before? And, as a corollary, that we are creating better customer experiences than ever before?
Great CX does follow a deeper customer understanding. But simply having data isn’t enough to guarantee CX success. It’s time to think in terms of omnichannel customer understanding.
In most organizations, customer understanding – like customer data – is segmented into various departments. Further complicating the picture is the variety of touchpoints we can have with our customers: website, social media, phone, in person, and so on. Just as omnichannel marketing seeks to create a unified message across all channels, CX teams need to work on creating an omnichannel customer experience across all mediums.
So how do we do this? In the big picture, omnichannel CX is really omnichannel understanding: we need to understand the customer’s experience on every contact point. Only then can the CX team start building an experience that aligns with the customer’s needs and the business’ goals.
Unfortunately, there’s one thing that stands in the way of omnichannel understanding, and that’s organizational structure. As mentioned above, most businesses silo data and customer understanding into departments. It is possible to overcome this and become more human-centric, sharing curated data and information across departments. But until we can adopt a human-centered approach, customer understanding – and CX – will still largely be patched together and improvised.
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