What is Omnichannel?

Omnichannel is business model with cross-channel approach that used by companies to improve customer experience in seamless way. The cross-channel refers to integration of any possible channels either physical (offline) or digital (online), like physical store, marketing mail, call center, website, email, mobile apps, email, and social media.

There's one keyword that differentiate between multi-channel and cross-channel, which is INTEGRATION. Omnichannel requires integration between channels. Take a sample scenario where a customer buy t-shirt from mobile apps, once he/she successfully place the order, there will be confirmation email sent with the purchase detail information, he/she can track the order status and able to see same information from website via desktop. When the customer immediately call contact center for inquiry or complaint, the contact center agent able to see the order information in the system so they can assist it properly.

Another example: if there is new product information put in the inventory system, company can decide and inform to existing customer via email based on their transaction history. And company also can promote the new product via any social media to attract new customer.

Omnichannel approach on many industries like Financial Service, Telecommunication, Retail, Healthcare, Contact Center and Government. Every company or industry will have their own unique way on implementing omnichannel, it will be derived by business direction and the customer behavior. In order to support omnichannel, industry need to have:

• Reliable IT infrastructure to support the integration, process any available data into meaningful information.
• Readiness of all company member to have same mindset to give better customer experience.

Please assist to share knowledge if your current company already start to implement omnichannel by giving any comment or feedback here.