While CMOs have been talking about delivering a seamless multichannel experience for years, the fact is, most companies are still failing on this front today. And, not without good reason.
Complexity has grown significantly.
There are more stakeholders, technologies, channels and touchpoints involved in the customer journey than ever before. Add to this the explosion of customer data, message testing and personalization in marketing campaigns, and you have a potential disaster on your hands.
What do we mean by “disaster?” Complexity left unmanaged turns into chaos. Chaos is defined as “complete disorder and confusion.” Given the results from a recent study, jointly conducted by InnerView and FocusVision, chaos is not far from the truth. The study found that marketing organizations are struggling to create one consistent message across all customer interactions. In fact, nearly 60 percent of companies agree their brand story is getting diluted before it reaches the buyer.
A report published by IDC also speaks to the multichannel message consistency challenge that CMOs face. “Today’s vendors have so many communication channels at their disposal that there are any number of ways to really mess things up.” The report states that CMOs must answer critical questions when it comes to delivering a consistent story throughout the customer experience:
- Is your customer being addressed the same way by your marketing communications and your sales communications?
- Is your customer receiving consistency in your communications whether he / she is online or offline?
- When your customer does business with your call center personnel and then he / she visits your authorized reseller to pick up his / her new device, does it feel like two entirely different experiences?
In the experience economy we operate in today, marketing leaders have no option but to answer these questions if they want to effectively manage multichannel messaging. They must also face this very simple fact:
Delivering a clear, compelling and consistent multichannel story reaches far beyond marketing and well beyond automated personalized messages. It requires every customer-facing area of the business and every partner involved in the customer journey to be “on message.”
