What you need to know to use omnichannel communications?

2017 promises to be a breakthrough year for omnichannel communications. In many areas, for example, in retail, this concept has been familiar for a long time. Other branches began to speak seriously about omnicanality only last year.



The problem is that few of the leaders or top managers, even realizing that their company needs omnichannel, know which side to approach the task. Often, attempts to introduce omnikality in communications look very awkward. I remember the stories of a decade ago, when marketing departments already knew that the brand should be promoted on social networks, but had no idea how to do it. So today with omnicanality. Many understand that it is needed, but do not know how and where to begin.

Therefore, we have prepared a short guide about what omnikanalnye communications, and how to integrate them into your business. After studying the basic information, you will be able to correctly assess what innovations your company needs.
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But first, let's look at the terminology.



This definition is from Wikipedia. And the best thing about the novelty of the term in our realities is the discussion of this article and its status - “proposed for deletion”. On the discussion page, it is clear that according to some participants, evidence is needed, “that the topic of the article is worthy of a place on Wikipedia.” But there is also “multichannel”!

Omnicanality and multichannel

At first glance, omnicanality is no different from multichannel, since it also implies the use of more than one tool to communicate with customers. However, there is a significant difference - in multichannel communications, channels exist independently of each other and are often not connected at all. One department of the company can call the client, not knowing that he has already written a letter to another department. Moreover, it happens that the employees of one department do not have a clue about what was the result of the client’s communication with another department.

In the case of omni-channel, many channels are used at once to communicate with customers, but using a single system gives the impression of a continuous communication session, and customers immediately see it and, most importantly, appreciate it.

The most important element of omnicanality is a single matrix, outside of which there should be no communications. It is important to remember that the client doesn’t care how he communicates with your company or with whom he specifically talks. For him, these are all stages of communication with the brand as a whole.

Optimization of business processes

In many companies, different departments use their own channels to communicate with customers and ignore others. So, marketing can do a newsletter with the news, and the support service answer the phone calls, but if you contact them on a question outside their competence, then you will be asked to use another channel of communication. “Contact the telephone support service”, “Contact your manager”, “Leave the application through the form on the website” ... customers receive such formal replies regularly. Why should the client himself think about which side to approach the brand? Why the company can not unravel its internal tangle of communications?



Most often the answer is: "We are so used to us, it is more convenient for us." In fact, today there are systems that can independently distribute incoming communications, regardless of what channel the client used. For example, if the letter contains the word “Problem”, then, most likely, the client needs a support service, which means that it needs to be redirected to it. It is not as difficult as it seems. Omnichannel is the ability to understand what a client expects and to do what he expects.

In order to understand how important it is to warn the wishes of the client, it is necessary to realize that the prosperity of the company depends on it. If every employee understands that every lost client (or a lost potential) is his responsibility, omnitenancy will become the obvious solution.

Omnichannel is not “all at once”

Getting started with omnichannel communications does not mean that you have to use all available channels at the same time. It will be enough to start with those that you already use, integrating them into a single system. If you use only voice communication and e-mail, combine them first, and then think about adding SMS and push notifications.

It is always better to start gradually and with what you know, only then step by step expanding the functionality.

It's time to make a plan

We proceed to the most important stage - to draw up a plan for the implementation of omnichannel communications. To help you with this, we created a omnichannel implementation strategy template that you can fill out by yourself.


Download the template and create a communication plan.

The strategy consists of the following parts:

Inventory. Here, list all the communication tools you currently use. If the tool is used by different groups of employees - enter this tool in the table for each of them. In our example, the e-mail is used by the marketing, customer support and sales departments, and they all have different tasks. Such a detailed description is necessary if you want to get a complete picture of what communications your business needs.

Parties concerned. Who should be involved in the process? The previous table showed which departments communicate with customers. Now it is necessary to select responsible. Enter here not only employees who are directly involved in communications, but also all those involved in creating content.

Integration. How will your systems share information with a single center and with each other? It can be very easy to organize, and quite difficult. It is also important to consider the potential for future development. And it is here that a significant part of your budget can be spent, but without integration there will be no omnichannel.

Other tools. Is something left out? How are social media involved in the communication process? Maybe you have other tools to communicate with customers, which contain valuable information?

Stages. Here it is necessary to paint the implementation process in phases. And here, too, it is important to calculate everything in advance, so as not to be a surprise, since the implementation of each new functionality that you did not have before may require both financial resources and time-consuming.

Messages And now examine all types of messages that you plan to send, and decide who and in what situations they should be sent. This planning stage can also be used in the future for planning communication campaigns.

And about technology

Did you notice that we almost didn’t talk about what technologies you would need to implement omnichannelity? In fact, technology is not the most difficult part of the task. There are already advanced solutions for most needs. But before you start using them, you need to accept the fact that all customers - existing and potential - are the responsibility of each employee of the company, and they must communicate with a single brand, and not isolated departments.

Is it time to start?

At the end of February, Infobip launched an OMNI solution that makes it easy to combine all channels of communication with a client, so that his experience of working with you is smooth and seamless. All functions are presented in one intuitive web interface. If you decide to implement technology for omnichannel communications in your business, contact us and we will help assess your needs, build a strategy and prepare a work plan. And if in doubt, we will tell if your business needs this at this stage.