Why Your Brand Needs to Deliver a Unified Customer Experience

To reach consumers, brands need omnichannel strategies that deliver a consistent customer experience at every touchpoint. Yet today’s technical and business conversations about omnichannel are often too limited in scope to achieve what’s ultimately possible. Brands typically only focus on customer interactions across one or two channels or fail to break up the many information silos that exist. As a result, they're missing the opportunity to get a clear 360-degree view of the customer or leverage the actionable insights that customer data provide.

Integrated data provides business owners insights to make strategic, data-driven decisions to best serve their businesses. Now more than ever, brands need to harness the power of data to unlock valuable insights that can deliver the omnichannel experiences that modern customers demand. From insights into domestic vs. international performance to understanding how sales team consults contribute to revenue, there are many examples of how customer service teams are using data to confront real business challenges.

The 'Meconomy' is Driving the Need for Unification

Let’s face it, the new economy is the "Meconomy." It’s all about the customer. Customers are in control of their journey and show no signs of moving to the passenger seat. They have high expectations for how they're treated and how quickly their issues are resolved; demand high levels of personalization; and want everything delivered via a seamless, low-friction experience. In fact, our research shows that 41 percent of consumers switched brands due to lack of personalization, and an astounding 96 percent of consumers will leave brands after a high-effort customer service experience.

So how can modern brands adapt and give customers what they’re asking for while making it easier for their customer service teams to deliver a seamless and exceptional experience? It starts with creating a modern tech stack that unifies channels and customer data to deliver a consistent and high-quality interaction. While this can be challenging for brands, modernizing your CX operations is well within reach.

1. Eliminate data silos. Data silos happen when data is kept separate or in a category that isn’t widely accessible to customer service agents. This makes it much more difficult for agents to make timely, data-driven decisions that will meet customer expectations. According to a UJET survey of customer service professionals, 84 percent said they still have data silos, hampering their ability to deliver a consistent customer experience. Furthermore, only 7 percent said that their systems are well integrated. By breaking down silos and maximizing insights from data, your CX team will be much better positioned to deliver more consistent customer experiences with the added bonus of boosting internal efficiencies.
2. Evaluate your CRM technology. Your technology should be equipped to unify customer data from all relevant systems and channels to create a single, customer-centric workspace. With this in place, you can unlock a 360-degree view of the customer to deliver more personalized experiences. Look for a solution that also has a full ecosystem of apps and integrations that can be added to your CRM platform for a unified and higher quality customer experience, especially with digital consumers using more channels. This will allow brands to more quickly and efficiently activate omnichannel CX operations and create the seamless, agile operations agents need to create meaningful customer relationships.
3. Embrace AI. AI can play an integral role in automating everything from routine tasks to more complicated business products. According to Salesforce, 51 percent of customer service agents say that they spend most of their time on mundane tasks. AI-enabled technology can go a long way in augmenting the role of the agent and enabling them to do their jobs better.

If you’re not taking a hard look at how you can better provide your customers with a unified experience, you should be. As the “omni-experience” becomes the new mandate, segmentation of data and channels are a non-starter. The brands that can successfully integrate back-end and customer-facing systems into a single platform will ultimately create a competitive advantage and show customers that they're truly putting them first.

Gabe Larsen is the vice president of growth at Kustomer, a customer service CRM platform for managing high support volume effortlessly.