Why introduce an Omni - channel user experience?

Isn’t it nice when things just work.

So said the iconic Honda advert in 2003.

Created to launch the new Accord model, the advert was a celebration of precision engineering and pitching individual components. A chain reaction of contact and push and shove, that demonstrated how utterly satisfying it is when things just work. (If you haven’t seen it, you must. You will be all the better for it!)

The viewers beautifully fluid journey from curious a tiny component to complete vehicle reveal, is similar in ambition to how successful businesses carry their customers across all stages of their journey: it just works.

Organisations need to deal with customers, whether they are researching, enquiring, buying or returning. These customers will be reviewing, rating and selecting companies across many different interaction channels and probably several devices. The best organisations recognise this and ensure their experience is seamless and consistent. Providing relevant content and purchase details no matter the touch point; keeping the customer moving seamlessly along the buying journey without hesitation, repetition or addition.

This process of complete personalisation is called Omni-channel marketing.

HubSpot define Omni-channel marketing as "A method where businesses promote their products and services across all channels, devices and platforms using unified messaging, cohesive visuals, and consistent collateral".

It is the antidote to disjointed and ineffective multi-channel marketing, that frustrates customers and dilutes the impact of your hard-won marketing dollars. Think about Amazon, Apple and Google and you will see Omni-channel marketing at its most graceful. Beautifully synced and primed processes that keep their customers moving in the right direction, regardless of interaction point. But you don’t need to be a tech behemoth to play at this game, you just need vision, strategy and discipline to define and build the correct processes that will make your customers think … isn’t it nice when things just work.

If you wish to adopt this approach, then the Neilson Norman Group suggest five components that combine to create a successful Omni-channel user experience:

• Consistency – as users migrate from channel to channel, they expect each to feel familiar and not required them to re-learn. This allows the customer to efficiently complete tasks and build trust
  
  
• Optimised for context – whether the customer is using web, email, mobile, kiosks, online chat, or phone, a usable experience is demanded.
  
  
• Seamless – customers expect minimal effort when migrating across channels, they do not want to re-input work when switching to a new channel.
  
  
• Orchestrated – intelligently offering something useful and relevant (a piece of content or an interaction) to your customer as a next step. Based on your knowledge of the customer and user base, you can predict their next move.
  
  
• Collaborative – allows for two or more normally disparate devices or channels to be used together to achieve a goal. Perhaps an additional device is more suited to the task, or the overall experience is improved by having multiple access points.