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| Five Steps to an Oh-So Digital Omnichannel World | Not that long ago, what everybody was striving for was a multichannel world. Now the word is omnichannel, which it could be argued is multichannel done properly! It takes a brave man to try to cut through jargon and at EyeforTravel’s Berlin event last month, Marco Ryan chief marketing officer at Thomas Cook attempted to compare the difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing. On what a multichannel approach is he had this to say: “If you are fundamentally a multichannel organisation, then you have an image of the Parthenon in your head.” Words/phrases to describe this included functional, siloed, strong, well-built, stands the test of time. But, and this is the big difference, it doesn’t delight customers, it doesn’t scale and it isn’t agile. Being omnichannel, on the other hand, is the idea of having everything based around the customer. “This is not just semantics. It is fundamental to the way an organisation thinks and behaves,” he said. In many ways, multichannel organisations essentially have an operational view; in other words the look at how customers complete transactions in each channel. Those taking an omnichannel approach, however, really view the experience through the eyes of the customer, arranging the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless, integrated, and consistent. The idea is to recognise that customers may start in one channel and move to another as they progress. Making these complex ‘hand-offs’ between channels must be as smooth as possible. Omnichannel:
a definition
So how do you do omnichannel properly? Here are five tips. 1. Change starts in the boardroom: To be able to develop an omnichannel strategy means having all parts of your company understanding its importance, Ryan suggested that to help support cultural change, take people outside of the culture, and bring them back as advocates. To deliver a true omnichannel company you need to ensure that the CTO is onboard and that the organisation is set up to work in cross-functional teams. 2. Take the customer’s journey: Regularly review the experience your customers go through to research, purchase, and connect with your products. Test the experience by placing orders, interacting via all available channels, submitting a support case, and more. Does everyone have a delightful experience? Are there any unnecessary barriers? Also speaking at the Berlin conference was Gilles Despas, CEO of HolidayCheck who said that when looking at the customer journey and multi-device usage, they found that 90% of customers are using multiple devices to make a purchase decision via their website. Another finding was that a decision to take a journey could take anything between three to six months. 3. Measure everything: According to Ryan “we are in a data driven age…one of your organisation’s core capability should be analytics.” Understanding your data is critical and it is important to ensure that data is shared across teams. Important too is the ability to use other forms of data outside of the organisation such as industry trend reports. Getting customers to talk through experiences is another idea. “The customer knows and understands what they want - listen to them.” Despas was in agreement and even speculated that: “One day we will rename all the marketing departments into customer data departments.” 4. Segment your audience, apply a user led model: Know your audience segments, and through that understand all you can about their behaviour. Use this to drive and create products that sell because your customers want them, rather than trying to just sell the products you make. This is the user led model rather than the innovation led model of creating products. 5. It is not social media or mobile first - it’s digital first: Ryan’s view was that if your strategy is mobile or social media first, then it’s already out of date. He likened such a strategy to putting “digital paint over analogue problems”. Key is to understand your digital assets and use these to work seamlessly across all of platforms and devices. An essential step is to create a digital management system that works across all functions, otherwise it is difficult to be agile, scale quickly or to respond to new innovations such as wearables. EyeforTravel is an online travel intelligence provider to hotels, airlines, online travel agents, cruise, car hire firms and more. Established in 1997 by Tim Gunstone, right at the inception of online travel, the group offers a diverse product portfolio including industry analysis, insights, research, webinars, reports and conferences. From major hotel brands to new startups, EyeforTravel helps its 80,000 strong customer base make better decisions, build better brands, close the most lucrative deals and ultimately sell more of their product. For more information visit www.EyeforTravel.com. Upcoming Events: Smart Travel Analytics N. America 2015 (January 28-29, 2015) Online Marketing, Social Media & Mobile in Travel Asia 2015 (February 3-4, 2015) Mobile & Innovation in Travel N. America 2015 (March 23-24, 2015) Contact:
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