Factor in the Four Pillars of the Customer Experience
As we saw in the last part of the course, the customer experience refers to the set of emotions a customer feels before, during and after making a purchase. This experience is what determines the customer's decision to buy, as well as their loyalty to the brand. So, as you develop your omnichannel strategy, it's essential to factor in elements of the customer experience in order to make your brand stand out from the competition.
The quality of the customer experience depends on four factors:
The Cognitive Aspect
These are elements that appeal solely to the rational brain. In other words, the buyer sees the product as useful.
The Affective Aspect
Is the product satisfying? Does it fulfill its purpose?
This concept of satisfaction directly depends on the buyer's expectations around the product. Therefore, it's very subjective.
The Behavioral Aspect
This aspect generally has to do with the intention to buy. Do you think you'll buy this product again? Customer loyalty is also part of the behavioral aspect.
The Emotional Aspect
This is the most all-encompassing factor, since it refers to the buyer's general sense of satisfaction around a product. This includes not only the product itself, but also the seller, the quality of service, etc.
Make the Customer Experience the Focus of Your Goals
Deploying an omnichannel strategy is an ambitious undertaking, and one that requires careful planning. Setting SMART goals is an excellent place to start.
How do I come up with my SMART goals?
When setting your SMART goals, you should:
keep the four pillars of the customer experience in mind.
factor in any data that's relevant to your plan.
go through the five SMART criteria one at a time.
write down (on your own and with your team) any ideas that come to mind for each criterion.
summarize your ideas so that each criterion is clearly fulfilled.
When coming up with your SMART goals, be ready to ask a lot of questions, both to yourself and your team members. The answers to these questions will help you refine your strategy and ensure that your goals are actionable.
For example, if your strategic goal is to increase the value of your company, here are two operational goals you might set:
Increase revenue (+x% revenue in 2024) by setting up an online store (e-commerce site) (operational goal)
Get to know customers better by collecting data (operational goal), which would let you do more targeted advertising (operational goal) and eventually build customer loyalty (goal: +x% returning customers)
Case Study: Home Made
What SMART goals could you set for our fictional company Home Made? Try to come up with one goal.
Estimate the Impact on Your Company's Structure
To create a successful omnichannel customer experience, your company has to have an omnichannel structure.
The first two steps to creating this structure are:
1. Working together to serve the customer
Everyone should be working toward serving the customer, and information should circulate and be shared by the whole company. This will require major changes, and above all else, a different mindset. To begin with, you'll have to stop working in "silos" and start moving towards a more collaborative way of working.
For example, you could "break down your silos" by having your sales team work together with your marketing and customer relations teams so they can share data on customers and be on the same page when it comes to providing them with information.
Once you've broken down your silos, you can start working on changing your work habits, which will be an important step in implementing your strategy.
2. Change how you work
The starting point for any action you take should be the customer's point of view rather than the company's. This may mean making a fundamental change to your company's work culture. The first step is to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience—your customers.
So, as we saw in the previous part of the course, all the departments in your company should be involved in building and implementing your omnichannel strategy.
It's also important to ensure that your digital outlets (e-commerce site, social media channels, etc.) and your physical outlets (brick-and-mortar stores) are as complementary as possible.
What resources can I use?
The starting point for implementing any omnichannel strategy is getting upper management involved, since they can:
oversee the plan and get others on board.
establish stakes and delegate responsibilities.
provide leadership at all levels of the company.
The IT department will be one of your first collaborators on this project. You need to be able to share and centralize your customer information in a tool that offers a 360° view of the data.
The objective is to instill a new culture within the company. From now on, everyone should be working toward the same goal, directing all the company's available channels and resources toward making the customer happy.
In other words, your company needs to become "customer-centric."
Given that the first step of this process is breaking down silos (each department working independently) and working together toward one common purpose—the customer experience—the agile approach to project management is a perfect fit for this plan.
The agile approach means creating small, highly autonomous, multidisciplinary teams that work very closely with the customer. That way, over time, they can design the omnichannel strategy that works best for your company, using collective intelligence and feedback.
The omnichannel experience starts with having the right technologies and processes in place, and extends to responding to the changing expectations of consumers and buyers.
Case Study: Home Made
Determine the key steps that should be taken for Home Made's omnichannel strategy, and their expected results.
Think of one strategic SMART goal and at least one corresponding operational SMART goal.
Let's Recap!
In order to outline your omnichannel strategy, it's important to set yourself some SMART goals:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-bound
When setting these goals, keep in mind the four pillars of the customer experience, which are key to a successful strategy:
Cognitive
Affective
Behavioral
Emotional
The omnichannel strategy is a revolution that's upending the business world, since it requires switching from a silo-based working model to an integrated, customer-centric model.
To make these changes in your company, you'll need the support of upper management to provide leadership and motivation, as well as the participation of every department to implement them on an operational level.
Now that you've set your SMART goals, it's important to get to know your customers so your strategy can be personalized and directed to the right target audience.
