Are your customers contacting you online?

Build it and they will come... Unfortunately don't build it and they will still come!

Annette Hickey, Head of Online and Social Media with Vodafone explores the importance of Omni-Channel

Have you noticed a swing towards online customer contact? More and more customers in my organisation are opting to care on line. At one time there was an attitude of corralling the customers on line to reduce costly calls into our contact centres. But naturally that didn't work, (unless there was a great user experience there to meet them).

Build it and they will come€¦unfortunately don't build it and they will still come!

It's vital to get your online, mobile and social sites out there.  And keep tweaking to deliver channel improvements.  Ask your customers for feedback; how easy was it to deal with us today? Customers are looking for a multi-channel approach when doing business with their suppliers, whether in telecoms like me or FMCG or any industry, customers expect to move between channels as it suits them and get an equivalent high standard across desktop, mobile device, call centre and retail. Customers are impatient when they try to purchase an online offer in store and it's unavailable. Customers have little tolerance for having to move out of one medium i.e. web and have to log on to another i.e. Social Media. Consider a situation where a customer is buying a product on line, and has to move to the Social site to read the product reviews, they won't be very impressed. According to Facebook sales increase X4 if a friend has recommended a product. Tie it all together for optimum results. We'll find out lots more about Omni strategy approach at the CCMA conference on the 23rd May from Keynote speaker Dan Stevenson, Senior Vice President E-Commerce Sony USA who will address the topic of "Delivering on the Promise of Omni-Channel - How implementing the right strategy across every customer touch point can deliver exceptional results. This post was kindly contributed by Annette Hickey, Head of Online and Social Media with Vodafone. Learn more about Annette