We launched our Multichannel Customer Experience Report today. Created in partnership with Econsultancy, the report contains some great insights into the current state of Customer Experience Management.

However it’s important to understand that multichannel customer experience is not a popular subject. There aren’t many boardrooms that host endless discussions on the subject.

The number of regularly published research and white papers on multichannel customer experience management are few and far between. Globally less than 130,000 English searches are undertaken on Google for ‘multichannel’ each month, for ‘multichannel customer experience’ it is less than 150 a month.

Multichannel customer experience is not a popular subject.

However it is an important subject. There have never been more channels through which our customers can potentially experience us. There are now more mobile phones in the world than toothbrushes. Of the UK total population of 61,800,000 Facebook appears to have accounts for 30,481,3002. Over the last 10 years this explosion of channels has dramatically changed our customers’ behaviour.

While mobile and social are just two of the more recent and high profile channels that our customers are using they are possibly the most important in setting customer expectations and establishing new customer behaviours.

At the start of the century the Internet had the effect of disintermediation – allowing customers to relate directly to many brands for the first time. Now our customers’ adoption of social media has had similar effects on customer-to-customer interactions. Much of this customer-to-customer exchange happens digitally but the subject of those exchanges cover every, and all, customer touch-points; on and offline, managed and unmanaged.

Online is now the place to share. The net effect is an amplification of the impact of both positive and negative customer experiences.

Talk, watch, test, survey and listen

At my company Foviance we spend a great deal of time with customers. We talk to them, we watch them, we test them, we survey them and we listen to them. Time and again we see their frustrations when they experience disruptions in their engagement with brands, but equally their awe and wonder when their journeys are frictionless and occasionally even enjoyable.

There aren’t many people out there focused on what is required to make customer experience management truly multichannel. That is a shame but also an opportunity for those that are. If you’re reading this consider yourself one of the elite and recognise that despite the challenges ahead the benefits of our journey are worth the effort.

The report comes in two parts:

1. a business focused report, which explores allows companies to benchmark themselves against their peers, and
2. a consumer survey report that provides five key industry sectors – travel, mobile, financial services, retail and gaming – an overview of the experiences they are providing for their customer (and allows them benchmark across industries.

The reports can be accessed from the Foviance website. I hope you find the report valuable. If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised just drop me a line or give me a bell on 08450 546 500 (International +448450 546 500)