Omnichannel, Its Benefits for Businesses & Implementation

In today's world, companies seek various ways to engage with customers or partners. Why? To enhance service levels, retain customers, and maintain communication. Achieving this would be more challenging without omnichannel capabilities.

An omnichannel approach unifies diverse communication channels into a single system, retaining the complete user history, allowing seamless interactions within one service. This encompasses offline touchpoints along with websites, manager calls, social media, emails, and messengers, all integrated.

In the article, we'll explore the advantages of omnichannel, how to implement it in business, and leverage its full potential.

How omnichannel differs from multichannel

Omnichannel integrates all communication channels into one system, forming a coherent and seamless connection with the customer at every touchpoint with the company.

The goal of omnichannel is to create a positive customer experience by enabling smooth and seamless transitions between interaction channels.

The omnichannel approach implies a well-structured correlation between all channels, enabling a manager to seamlessly engage with customers from any device. The seamlessness in omnichannel operations is achieved through specialized services that grant access to user data.

Let's illustrate this with a clear example.

Imagine you visit a favorite store's website on your computer. You add an item to your cart that you want to purchase but get distracted and close the page. Later in the evening, you return to the store, intending to resume your purchase, but this time, you navigate to the store's mobile app instead of the website. The product you previously chose is already in your cart, eliminating the need to search for it again.

When it comes to the multichannel principle, it has ceased to be convenient for businesses. When a potential customer first visits the website, then switches to the app, and later engages with a manager on social media — for the company, these are three different customers. Consequently, three different managers handle them. Those handling online orders have no visibility into offline interactions. In other words, there is no integration between the channels.

All this occurs because, in developing an omnichannel strategy, businesses have sided with the customer, simplifying the entire customer journey towards a potential purchase.

What is omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing is a form of marketing that involves the collaborative use of multiple communication channels to simplify and optimize customer communication.

Key objectives of omni-channel marketing include:

• striving to make the customer's path to purchase as convenient as possible, regardless of the device or location;

• automating the management of customer data, analytics, and interaction channels, significantly enhancing a company's operational efficiency;

• increasing the average purchase value and improving business service quality by speeding up the path between communications.

Omnichannel marketing offers its advantages:

1. Communication takes place within a single window. For the convenience of engaging with customers, all communications can be conducted within an omnichannel platform without the need to open different windows.

2. Personalization. With all user data and actions gathered in one place, it presents an excellent opportunity to tailor individual offers and relevant content for recipients.

According to statistics, over 70% of users are disappointed when they receive impersonal and non-personalized content.

3. Forecasting customer behavior through analyzing purchasing capability and data within the platform.

4. Automated scenarios. Implementing all marketing strategies for your business: managing loyalty, abandoned carts, welcome email sequences, and much more.

5. Deep audience segmentation capability. The larger the customer base, the deeper it can be segmented based on various criteria.

Benefits of implementing omnichannel strategies

When a company decides to implement omnichannel marketing, it undoubtedly has a positive impact on both the business itself and its customers. Let's delve into the benefits of each.

Previously listed were aspects that are advantages of omnichannel from the business perspective. Additionally, these can be attributed to them:

• building a strong reputation, fostering customer goodwill, and enhancing brand recognition;

• long-term cost reduction through a systematic approach to communication, seamlessness, and marketing processes;

• the more communication channels engaged, the larger the market share captured by the company.

*For instance, a Harvard Business Review study *indicated that 94% of respondents considered an omnichannel strategy far more effective than other sales models.*

From the customer's perspective, the implementation of omnichannel strategies offers the following advantages:

• High-quality technical support services. In today's world, as consumers, we use a multitude of different applications, messengers, and websites. Regardless of where a customer places an order, adds items to their cart, or asks a question, they can expect immediate responses and timely assistance.

According to the marketing company Criteo, user experience surpasses pricing and product quality in importance when consumers choose a brand.

• Avoiding unnecessary "spam". In an effort to retain customers, companies inundate them with content across various channels, leading to customer overload. Everyone seeks convenience and timeliness. Through omnichannel marketing, this overload can be avoided.

Challenges when implementing omnichannel marketing

The challenges in implementing omnichannel marketing aren’t numerous and include:

1. Additional investments for the company. The cost of an omnichannel system varies. Ready-made platforms suit small, medium, and large projects. However, larger corporations may require developing their own system due to the more global nature of their business tasks.

2. It takes time to integrate omnichannel strategies into an existing company structure. This also involves training the staff to work with the platform. However, the invested effort and time pay off once the team becomes adept with the new approach.

3. To make this strategy work, a dedicated specialist is needed to test various marketing hypotheses and create personalized communications. In simpler terms, a CRM marketer will be required to work with user data analytics.

The process of implementing omnichannel strategies

The process of implementing omnichannel strategies can be broken down into several steps:

Firstly, it's essential to analyze the current processes and gather all communication data within the company: understanding which channels consumers use to interact and make purchases (such as the website, mobile app, or offline stores). Following this, a technical specification for implementing omnichannel solutions is formed.

Secondly, after analyzing the company's communications, identifying user interaction channels is crucial. It's equally important to comprehend the scenario of their journey leading to a purchase—how it currently happens and how one desires it to occur in the future. To achieve this, a Customer Journey Map (CJM) is constructed.

Thirdly, the selection of a platform and staff preparation come into play. Presently, there are ready-made marketing automation solutions in the market, but not all are user-friendly. As discussed earlier in the article, depending on the business's size, ready-made solutions might suffice, or the development of a proprietary platform might be necessary. Regarding staff, allocating time for their retraining, devising performance metrics, and motivational strategies is imperative.

Lastly, the fourth and concluding step involves informing customers about the new possibilities and the transition to new methods and strategies. It's important to communicate the ongoing dynamic development to both the business and its consumers, fostering improved communication between them.

CJM within digital marketing

Conclusion

The main conclusions that can be made are as follows:

As communication channels with consumers continue to multiply, managing them becomes increasingly challenging. However, there exists a strategy to consolidate them into a unified system — the omnichannel one.

Omni-channel marketing fulfills several key tasks: striving to make the customer's path to purchase as convenient as possible, automating the management of customer data, analytics, and interaction channels, increasing average purchase value, and enhancing service quality.

To implement omnichannel strategies into a business thoughtfully and with minimal disruption, it's crucial to meticulously analyze current processes, prepare a CJM, envision the path of the target consumer, aid employees, and inform customers accordingly.