Presented to the University of Washington HCDE's Interaction Design class on March 1st, 2012 in Seattle, Washington.
No matter how many departments your organization has, to your customers, it’s all the same business. They expect a cohesive experience across all touch-points with your company, regardless of whether it’s related to advertising, customer service, social presence, or the actual product or service you provide. The satisfaction of your customers, and thereby the success of your organization, depends in no small part on your ability to create a cohesive and consistently high-quality cross-channel experience. Some examples of disjointed cross-channel experiences are:
- The customer has to inform the customer service representative of what the website says about their own return policy.
- The specifications of a product online does not match the actual product a customer goes to pick up in the retail store.
- The experience of the mobile application is far superior to the experience of the standard web application or software application.
- The customer has to make three different phone calls to get their account changed because the information is stored in three separate business units.
Applying consideration for the cross-channel experience is much easier said than done. It requires a significant level of coordination and collaboration between the stakeholders, to understand not just how to optimize their particular part of the service, but to maintain that optimal and consistent experience throughout. For example, the customer service department can do a great job of correcting a problem after the fact, but they can add greater value to the product or service as a whole by collaborating with sales and product teams to prevent the issue from arising in the first place. In this presentation, you will gain a better understanding of the different ways your customers might interact with your business. We will show how you can map out these touchpoints and help drive the creation of a cohesive experience across the various channels. We will show you how to navigate the political waters within your business to implement a true cross-channel design, which will build great experiences for your customers, regardless of how they are engaging with your business.