In today’s media-driven world, with mobile devices, social networks, and company websites playing the lead roles in consumer purchase decisions, marketers may want to deem “communication” the new “location”. As consumers access these multiple touch points throughout the research process, businesses need to create an integrated cross-channel customer experience to build trust, increase loyalty, and ultimately win consumers.

Sounds easy enough, but with consistently low customer satisfaction ratings for cross-channel customer experiences, it’s obvious that businesses are struggling with this. Why is that? For one, it is enough of a challenge to merely keep a company website up-to-date, never mind ensuring that is also delivers an excellent customer experience. Add to that the growing number of web-enabled mobile devices and the rise of social network usage and companies face a real challenge when it comes to creating a seamless and personalized experience for each user. The goal is to figure out how to communicate, not only constantly, but consistently with customers across all these intersecting channels. We have listed several ideas below to get you going.

Optimize your website for all mobile devices
We’re talking more than just resizing the screen and calling it a day! This requires getting in tune with how you want customers to move across the various channels and devices they use to interact with you. Customers on the go using their smartphone to get quick information have different goals than customers accessing your website from the comfort of their office. The key is to tailor the experience to what customers want, when they want it – quick answers to specific questions or a more engaging experience where they can browse and search. This allows you to recognize the customer as an individual and customize your content to them regardless of the way they choose to access it.

Make it personal
By addressing the customer’s context as opposed to just the channel or device they happen to be using, you are able to create a personalized experience. This means it’s not just enough to know how they are seeking information, but in what situation they are seeking this information – the who, what, where, why, and when. All these factors will help you to present relevant, timely, and highly- targeted content.

Make communication a two-way street
Communication needs to be a give and take to be effective and customers need to feel that their opinion counts. An easy and effective way to do this is to use your website to invite comments, ratings, and reviews. This lets customers know you are committed to improving customer satisfaction and provides them with a forum for discussion with you and with other customers. This provides many benefits for you too. Your best sales team may very well be your customers, so why not unleash the power of all those happy customers, as they interact and communicate to help sell your products? Customer comments and blogs allow you to directly respond to customers and address issues before they affect more customers. The feedback from ratings and reviews lets you get into the heads of your users and find out what they are seeking so you are guaranteed to hit the mark when you go to market with new products and services – a win-win for all.

Help them to help themselves!
Ease the call volume of contact centers, decrease costs, and increase customer satisfaction. Sound good? As long as it is intuitive and appropriate to each channel and device, offering web self-help can really, well, help! The key is understanding the potential problems that users encounter and providing the right help at the right time.

Providing a forum that allows you to tap into your users (many of whom enjoy helping others deal with issues they too have faced) not only builds a powerful database of solutions and takes the pressure off your own call center employees, but builds a customer community that works to increase customer loyalty. The most important thing is to ensure a smooth transition between channels. If customers don’t have to repeat information their frustration and the time your agents need to serve them will be greatly reduced. Also be sure that your call center number is still easily found on your web site so that customers can contact you on their terms.

Know who your customer is – all the time
With more and more customers accessing you through different channels at different times, it is becoming increasingly important to take an integrated approach that provides a snapshot of key customer information across all channels. Not only will this allow you to address customers on a personal level as they contact you through a new channel – making them feel important – but it will help your sales team to easily identify cross and up sell opportunities.

Be a social butterfly
Go ahead, spread your wings. With social networking on the rise – 46 percent in 2009 according to Forrester Research – social networks offer a new way to get in touch with your customers, drive web traffic, get customer insights through candid conversations, and provide real-time information to your organization – allowing you to increase the size and loyalty of your audience and maximize your communication efforts. Just be sure to stick to social networks that are relevant to your audience, otherwise you are wasting time with something potential customers will never use.

Mix it up
Make these different channels work for you. By mixing your various channels together and having them play off each other, you can create integrated marketing campaigns to liven up your marketing efforts, differentiate your company, and get your target audience to sit up and take notice.

It’s easy to get hung up on the task of managing the many channels, devices, and social networks that we have today. Instead look at this as a unique opportunity which offers many new ways to approach customers and allows you to differentiate your business through multi-channel, innovative campaigns that spark interest, ignite desire, and most importantly keep your sales engine running.

Listen up and don’t be shy about it
At the end of the day you can do all the work you want creating integrated, personalized communication and it would be all for nothing if you do not actually listen to what your customers are telling you. You do this by taking real steps to improve your business based on the feedback and advice garnered from your customers. But what good is this if your customers don’t even know that you have listened? Take it one step further. Tell them. It goes a long way to toot your own horn and actually tell your customers that you have listened to them and let them know what you have done as a result. Think: You asked, we listened. And since you’ll already have the communication channels set up to do just that, it should be no trouble at all! What a great way to not only communicate, but demonstrate, to your customers that they are important.

Need help creating an effective and innovative integrated communication strategy? Look no further, contact us today!