I attended IAB Engage (http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/home.html) once again last year and saw Josh Spear who was presenting on the idea of being “born digital”. I really liked what Josh had to say and have become a real fan of his website. Josh was talking about the age of digital and that many of the people in the room were not born digital and were having to learn what is was all about. Our kids however, will be born digital and will grow up living in a digital world.
I have formed a view that digital doesn’t explain the entire situation and is too narrow. Our children will grow up in a world where experience is designed around them and this will be a multi-channel world. They won’t differentiate between what is digital and what is not because the differences will be so slight, so minimal that to them their interactions will feel like one seamless connection. The implications for individuals and organisations are vast covering technology, economics, organisational structure, human resource management, design, human factors and much more. Information in this area is limited but growing and this section of the blog is to capture ideas, links and references to information that helps me build a picture of this multi-channel world.
Introduction
The future of multi-channel customer experience will have an enormous impact on the way we live, work and play. Organisations will have to operate against an entirely different set of rules than they are used to and though the word is over used, this will be a paradigm shift on the scale of the industrial revolution. The implications on the structure and organisation of businesses, the economic models they operate under and the way they have to design engagement with their customers are vast. But the changes organisations will have to make will be driven by behavioural changes in the user base. The ‘Born Digital’ generation will be the customer base of tomorrow and things are changing right now.
The very definition of multi-channel is misunderstood in many quarters. In industry events I have sat in a room full of retailers and the prevailing opinion seems to be that multi-channel retailing is achieved by creating a good web presence and at a stretch adding a mobile WAP application. As a sector that has been working in a multi-channel way through the combination of mail-order, call center and store longer than anyone they should no better.
The challenge for these and all organisations is that the problems are not technological, they are behavioural - both within and outside the organisation. The solutions will certainly employ new technology but that is the easy bit. Users are adopting new technologies faster than organisations and this adoption is altering the way they interact with each other and want to interact with organisations.
The Economist published a special report thjis week in to mobility. The report primarily focusses on the changes to user behaviour caused by the increasing access to wireless technology. In one example is describes enginners at Google “the leading internet company and a magnet for nomads”. Typically these engineers are seen now with only “a Blackberry, iphone or other “Smartphone”. If ever the need arises for a large keyboard and some earnest typing they sit down in front of the nearest available computer anywhere in the world, open its web browser and access all their documents online.”
In the same report the Economist publishes figures from the International Telecommunications Union that shows how mobile phone users have outstripped Internet users. These are not small differences either. In 2007 the ITU reported about 1.25 billion Internet users compared to nearly 3.3 billion subscribing to a mobile phone service - more than half the worlds population.
But its not just about mobile. Although more people globally are making a mobile phone their device of choice when accessing the Internet, we are also seeing the difference between television and the internet narrowing. In the UK the major TV companies are considering legal action over the activities of online EPG www.tvguide.co.uk. They are concerned that tvguide.co.uk is going to take ad revenues from them despite the fact they are content providers. There is a new land to be pioneered here and nobody currently understands what the outcome will be. The only certainty is that consumers will behave differently tomorrow than they do today.
Thinking needs to take place at the experience level. It is the only area that singularly connects the changing elements together. Processes, systems and organisational behaviour need to support an idea of multi-channel customer experience. This will have to happen irrespective of who owns the channel, the content, the ad revenue, the click through fees. These are not trivial issues but they cloud judgement about how organisations should shape to meet the changing needs of their users. To form this view will require research to understand the changing needs of the ‘Born Multi-Channel’ generation. It will evolve constantly and is and will continue to be owned not by organisations and businesses but by consumers. Everything will change.
What constitutes being “multi-channel”?
Perhaps it is easier to start by defining what isn’t multi-channel. Many organisations seem to believe that ‘mobile’ or ‘iDTV’ are multi-channel in themselves. Becoming a multi-channel organisation is not about adding an additional route to market or communication channel. Simply putting a kiosk in a store and connecting it the internet is not multi-channel as I define it. On his blog, Dave Chaffey provides a definition of multi-channel marketing as follows “Customer communications and product distribution are supported by a combination of digital and traditional channels at different points in the buying cycle“. It is the inclusion of the word “combination” that helps when thinking about how this definition informs that of the multi-channel customer experience. On Stoffers Soap box there is a reference to a quote from eStara’s blog (link no longer works) that he feels sums up what its all about: “Organizations need to think beyond whether or not customers are having a good call center experience, or a good Web site experience, and worry about whether customers are having a good brand experience. Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than investing time and effort online and then having to transition to a phone call and “start all over again.” The best contact center technologies are those that provide a seamless cross-channel experience and offer a continuity of experience for the customer.” Whilst this quote tends to think in terms of only two channels the underlying message is correct.
And it is not just about how you think about the connection between the channels that informs our defitinition of multi-channel experience, it is also how the experience is delivered. Karl Long, on his blog “Experience Curve” provides the following guidance: “Many companies would have you believe that a “multi channel customer experience” means you make your “content” or “applications” available to all a customers devices, and making sure your “brand” or “message is consistent.” Karl believes “it’s not about your message, it’s not about your brand, its about the “experience” and guess what, “consistent experience” is not the very peak of any endeavor, it’s marginal at best”.
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