If you’ve never heard of the term “omnichannel,” it’s time you sat up and took note. It is one of the trends that has been caught on the radar of large companies such as Salesforce and Zendesk, becoming part of consultants such as McKinsey and being practiced by social channels such as Twitter.

The rationale behind omnichannel engagement stems from the explosion in the numbers and types of devices and channels available for customers to reach and engage with brands and businesses. When these channels become available, customers expect companies to honor their commitment to those channels by engaging with them extensively across them, no matter what the cause.

Read on to learn more about omnichannel engagement, why it matters to you, and how you can capitalize on it to improve customer satisfaction and employee happiness.

1. You are probably doing it wrong

Omnichannel engagement is about delivering consistent experiences to customers and stakeholders across the full range of possible mediums in which they might reach your business.

Interactions with someone in a company is probably one of the most personal and value-creating touchpoints for a customer; frustrations or inconsistency between different channels can turn these touchpoints into points that lead to dissatisfaction rather than increased customer equity. As such, it is extremely important that you understand every channel through which your customer contacts you and how to maintain a pleasant experience at all times.

Thinking about your own business, what are some of the efforts that have gone into helping everyone on your team consistently respond to customers? Have you conducted training sessions, prioritized lists, created a task force, and empowered your team with the right answers?

2. It is changing the way companies are managed

It used to be that having a store was all you had to attend to. Finally the phone arrived. And SMS. Then email. And now you have all of the above plus everything from Facebook and Twitter, to Google search, WeChat and WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat and new channels that seem to pop up every other day, where customers are trying to reach you. Now, if you’re running a business in 1995, you could get away with trying to force your customers to call or email you with inquiries. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), it’s 2015 and you need to be prepared for this multitude of channels.

Having these channels doesn’t just affect operations and customer service. It also affects your marketing and branding, sales, finances, and human resource assignments, among other things. Think of the potential to turn each of these touchpoints into a branded customer experience; about how you could sell your other products depending on the channels; how you now need to hire “social media managers” on your team… The impacts are great and you need to consider them all as a whole when evaluating how your business will prosper in this era.

3. It’s about value, but not just profit

When we talk about engagement, we don’t necessarily mean just sales. Your company’s sales can only come about when you provide enough value to customers. Back in Marketing 101, you may have heard of the 4Ps: The elements of your product, place, and promotion must be in place and providing value before you can think about price and how to recapture value as a business from customers. customers.

For many businesses, omnichannel engagement may well be built into product (for example, you have an app on your phone, tablet, and site), distribution (try to sell across multiple channels like social media and other commerce deal stores). email) and promotions. (spread your ad in offline and online media). Now, it’s even more critical that you have all of these channels on hand because your customers are likely to look at you on multiple channels before ultimately deciding to choose you.

So if you think about it, unless you’re offering enough value that people want to pay you for it, you can’t keep pushing just for profit anymore, because people will find out. And while you’re there, you better provide excellent customer service and support, because since you can sell them on those channels, you better be willing to help them there too.

4. Emerging trends in chat, wearables and IoT are impacting you

The buzzwords of our time are probably all in the spot you just read above (aside from artificial intelligence, a topic for another day). However, they are trends for a reason, and you should be aware of them as they move towards more mature consumer-ready technologies.

Chat is already ubiquitous among consumers, following in the footsteps of the mobile trend. Chances are you are reading this on mobile while chatting with your friends in one of the nine chat apps on your phone. Since chat apps are the most used and highly engaged apps in customers’ lives, be prepared to engage with them where they already live. In countries like China, where channels like WeChat and QQ are prevalent among vocal consumers, it has become necessary for businesses to stay on those channels to handle sales and service inquiries 24 hours a day. If you look at e-commerce players like Qoo10 and Taobao, you’ll also find that chat has become indispensable in the transaction process.

Wearables, made popular by watches like the Apple Watch and Pebble, as well as fitness trackers like FitBit, are also becoming a part of consumers’ daily lives. Notifications and interactions have become even more personal and private, meaning you can be closer to the customer or disconnect from their digital life. IoT (short for Internet of Things) follows as connected devices (many of which are tied to interfaces on wearable and mobile devices) that can also send you configuration logs and help messages, which you then have to have even more of a plan to discover how exactly to address them, and attribute them to a single customer.

5. Your Going Mobile Workforce Needs to Know

From your team’s point of view, it’s also important to understand that all these new channels and trends can be confusing. With so many more channels to monitor, it will become more chaotic and tiring to manage. Without the proper training and empowerment, you could leave your team simmering in increasing unhappiness as they struggle to deal with new channel responsibilities without centralized repositories of responses or visibility into how others on the team are responding.

Workforces are becoming even more mobile these days, with distributed teams and remote work becoming more common over time. Not only could this save travel time, but it could increase productivity by reducing interruptions throughout the day and allowing team members to work when they are at their best. The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend also means that teams are now responsible for their own use of phones and other devices, and could herald a true 24/7 connected workforce, which makes always-on, omnichannel communications even more essential for businesses. .

6. Your customers expect it

The most important thing about being omnichannel is that your customers now expect it from you. As a summary of all the points listed above, we can conclude that because you have all of these channels set up and may already be selling through them, you will need to have some presence serving and supporting customers on these channels.

Customers don’t see channels as channels themselves; therefore, the experience must be perfect in all of them. When you have a problem, for example, do you think “company X Twitter” is different from “company X email”? Quite unlikely – you’d see them as “Company X”, and judge them based on how responsive, thorough, and consistent they are when they reply to you.

If you already expect this from the companies you buy from or do business with, then you need to understand that your customers expect the same from your business.

7. It is not as difficult as you think

All of these demands and trends may seem overwhelming, but recognize that they are also a part of your life. You can talk to different people on different platforms and post different updates on different social channels. Treat customers like people: they are human, just like our friends. While the lines may blur in the channels, it’s probably because you should be viewing them as a whole and not just as separate channels.

Omnichannel engagement is simply a way of thinking about your engagement in an ecosystem of channels that support your business strategy and customer needs. By taking the first step in recognizing, detailing, and understanding the big picture of all these channels together, you’ll be able to strategize what needs to be done to move your business forward today.