Getting omni channel customer experience right

The UK continues to be extremely demanding in its needs for digital maturity with customers expecting a great deal from companies when it comes to digital interaction. Websites need to be responsive and we expect email and SMS as standard alongside conventional phone interaction. We also increasingly want webchat alongside our web usage with options to sign on and communicate through social media with authentication from our Facebook account. This multi-channel universe creates huge issues for companies as they try to keep pace with communications between channels and safe guard the customer from having to authenticate each time they switch through channels, e.g. Proving who they are in webchat but electing to switch to the phone and not expecting to have to go through this all over again. Getting this right and creating real omni-channel engagement means building this into the system architecture from the ground up and considering how you will move customer information between channels real time so you know that it is Jim Brown on the phone and he has been browsing for a new iPhone but has previously looked at Samsung and has been asking questions of the webchat team on 4G compatibility. Omni-channel means all this information is effortlessly moving between channels and the customer golden record is key and moves between them picking up fresh details at each step to help make the experience as epic as possible for our customer who is blissfully unaware of the complexity behind their omni channel euphoria.