Watching customers under an omnichannel strobe light

Omnichannel will remain full of holes until we figure out a way of tracking user journeys rather than trying to prescribe (design, document, maintain) process flows.

As a customer jumps between the various channels, they move between systems. In doing so, we tend to lose the ability to watch customer’s journey as a single continuous flow. It’s like trying to watch customer behaviour under a strobe light… except that the light only strobes on for a few seconds every minute.

Theoretically, omnichannel is a great concept for customers because it allows them to step through any channel at any time to suit their unique behavioural preferences. In practice, it can be a challenging experience for customers because of a lack of consistency and flow between channels.

It’s a massive challenge for providers to deliver consistency and flow because the disparate channels have vastly different user interfaces and experiences. IVR, digital, retail, etc all come from completely different design roots.

Vendors are selling the dream of cost reductions through improved efficiency within their channels. Unfortunately this is the wrong place for a service provider to look. It’s the easier place to look, but the wrong place nonetheless. Processes already tend to be relatively efficient within a channel and data tends to be tracked well within a channel.

The much harder, but better place to seek benefits is through the cross-channel user journeys, the hand-offs between channels. That’s where the real competitive advantage opportunities lie.

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