Match capability to customer expectations with scalable omnichannel technology

There remains much that is uncer­tain about the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic but there are two facts about which we can be sure: one, there has been a mas­sive accel­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts; and two, post-pan­dem­ic cus­tomer behav­iours will be more omnichan­nel and need more online and offline inte­gra­tion than ever before. Cus­tomers are going to make even big­ger demands of brands and organ­i­sa­tions are wor­ried they won’t match up.

Research from Pre­cise­ly illus­trates the chal­lenge. Increas­ing­ly, cus­tomers are replac­ing in-per­son inter­ac­tions with online alter­na­tives. More than three-quar­ters (79%) of exec­u­tives sur­veyed stat­ed that the vol­ume of their web­site inter­ac­tions had increased, while 59% saw more activ­i­ty in apps and 57% on mes­sag­ing plat­forms or via chat­bot.

How­ev­er, 67% agreed that cus­tomers gen­er­al­ly still want to speak direct­ly to a human and 64% believed their cus­tomers were over­whelmed by the vol­ume of com­mu­ni­ca­tions they receive. There is clear­ly a need to make sure com­pa­nies are inter­act­ing with cus­tomers wher­ev­er they are, with mes­sag­ing that is appro­pri­ate and in a for­mat that’s easy to con­sume. It sounds sim­ple but, as many organ­i­sa­tions recog­nise, it can prove very com­plex to solve.

Build an agile, intuitive technology base

“Tying togeth­er the cus­tomer jour­ney makes big demands of many busi­ness­es that are often oper­at­ing on decades-old lega­cy tech­nol­o­gy,” says Greg van den Heuv­el, exec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of Enga­geOne Solu­tions at Pre­cise­ly. “Even com­pa­nies that have already begun a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney encounter prob­lems. By mov­ing towards API-based tech­nolo­gies, organ­i­sa­tions can make true omnichan­nel cus­tomer expe­ri­ences a real­i­ty.”

There is a per­cep­tion that new tech­nolo­gies are dif­fi­cult to onboard, adapt and train staff on. New­er, API-based solu­tions have none of the inflex­i­bil­i­ty, few­er redun­dan­cies and greater ease of inte­gra­tion, mak­ing them the obvi­ous solu­tion to the ques­tion of omnichan­nel trans­for­ma­tion.

Enga­geOne Com­mu­ni­cate is one such sys­tem that brings togeth­er stan­dard cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels – email and SMS – with more advanced meth­ods such as chat­bots and inter­ac­tive video. It is also an exam­ple of what is called a low code tech­nol­o­gy.

While it has the poten­tial to be cus­tomised and adapt­ed by a skilled inter­nal IT team to meet very spe­cif­ic, advanced needs, it can also be used ‘out of the box’ by most employ­ees. It is part of the gen­er­a­tion of enter­prise tools that have tak­en their cue from the con­sumer space, using recog­nis­able fea­tures such as ‘drag and drop’. Employ­ees don’t have to be pow­er users of the sys­tem to get up and run­ning with pol­ished-look­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which also means they can get cam­paigns off the ground from ideation to com­ple­tion in days, rather than weeks or months.

Integrate data for the complete picture

Of course, a slick cam­paign cre­at­ed on a slick inter­face is worth very lit­tle unless the mes­sage is mean­ing­ful to cus­tomers. Per­son­al­i­sa­tion is also a key part of the omnichan­nel expe­ri­ence. Exec­u­tives sur­veyed in the Pre­cise­ly research con­curred, with 60% stat­ing their num­ber one pri­or­i­ty for 2021 was to invest in data inte­gra­tion, integri­ty or enrich­ment tech­nolo­gies.

There is a clear and imme­di­ate need for plat­forms that instant­ly con­nect to data in real time to allow per­son­alised inter­ac­tions across all chan­nels. They also need to pro­vide data access and ana­lyt­ics that allow com­pa­nies to iden­ti­fy gaps in the cus­tomer jour­ney.

The key to suc­cess­ful per­son­al­i­sa­tion isn’t just hav­ing that wealth of data at your fin­ger­tips, it’s being able to use it.

Train­ing a wide swathe of employ­ees in data analy­sis and onboard­ing is one option but it is time-con­sum­ing and suc­cess­ful organ­i­sa­tions thrive when there is a bal­ance of skills, not a large cohort of sin­gle-skilled mem­bers. Choos­ing plat­forms that make it easy to access data and under­stand the insights data pro­vides, as well as the best next steps, is the most effec­tive way of mak­ing the most of the work­force.

“The eas­i­er a sys­tem is to use, the more like­ly peo­ple are to use it,” explains van den Heuv­el. “This empow­ers the organ­i­sa­tion to cre­ate effec­tive cam­paigns across mul­ti­ple chan­nels with­out com­pro­mis­ing on the lev­el or pre­ci­sion of per­son­al­i­sa­tion.”

More agility, more collaboration, more satisfaction

Uni­fied plat­forms like Enga­geOne Com­mu­ni­cate don’t just deliv­er on speed and sim­plic­i­ty. Teams need to be able to col­lab­o­rate, iter­ate and grow. For that, they need solu­tions that can evolve along with them.

“For com­pa­nies used to email and SMS, the leap to video and chat­bot can seem daunt­ing, but this is increas­ing­ly how cus­tomers choose to inter­act with busi­ness­es,” con­tin­ues van den Heuv­el. “If the employ­ee user expe­ri­ence is sim­pli­fied, pro­vid­ing these next lev­el expe­ri­ences shouldn’t prove chal­leng­ing at all.”

Blue Shield of Cal­i­for­nia, a health insur­ance provider, ini­tial­ly launched a per­son­alised inter­ac­tive video ser­vice where cus­tomers could com­pare health insur­ance poli­cies – a dif­fi­cult task to com­plete with­out expert guid­ance. Video was not a ‘nice to have’, it was an ele­gant yet sim­ple solu­tion to a com­plex need.

Each Blue Shield video con­cludes with a sur­vey, and 83% of prospec­tive mem­bers have rat­ed their video four or five stars (out of five). Most impor­tant, after inter­act­ing with their videos, 73% of view­ers have indi­cat­ed that they are like­ly to choose a Blue Shield plan.

Hav­ing seen how eas­i­ly it could cre­ate inter­ac­tive videos, even ones tai­lored to indi­vid­ual users’ needs, the com­pa­ny then went on to add an inte­grat­ed chat­bot func­tion.

This allows prospec­tive mem­bers to find a doc­tor or ask detailed ques­tions about their plan choic­es. There is still the option of allow­ing humans to step in, but this digi­tised, cross-chan­nel, per­son­alised jour­ney shows how uni­fied plat­forms can increase cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and busi­ness effi­cien­cy.

Con­tin­u­ing to deliv­er on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence means main­tain­ing an agile approach and open mind­set to emerg­ing trends and the future needs of the busi­ness. For some com­pa­nies, the goal is afford­able scal­a­bil­i­ty. This means acquir­ing a solu­tion that doesn’t just address a business’s needs as its grows, but is also cost and fea­ture-appro­pri­ate to its needs today.

The way for­ward from a ven­dor per­spec­tive is to design prod­ucts that don’t just help com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rate inter­nal­ly but can help them work at dif­fer­ent speeds, acknowl­edg­ing the vary­ing lev­els of need in the organ­i­sa­tion. Today’s needs may be to sup­port day-to-day mar­ket­ing; tomor­row, more cus­tom approach­es designed in-house by IT spe­cial­ists may be required.

“Future dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a giv­en,” van den Heuv­el con­cludes, “but it should be evo­lu­tion­ary, not dis­rup­tive or painful. A plat­form like Enga­geOne Com­mu­ni­cate is designed to allow com­pa­nies to scale at their own pace – and that of their cus­tomers – whether they’re an SME or FTSE 100 com­pa­ny. From low code to high tech, cost sav­ings to deep­er cre­ativ­i­ty, there is some­thing for every­one.”

To find out more, vis­it www.precisely.com/product/engageone-communicate

Pro­mot­ed by Pre­cise­ly