The Importance of Omnichannel for Improving Customer Experience
Two of Capto’s centers of excellence – healthcare and TME (Telecommunications, Media, and Entertainment) – at first would not seem to have much overlap, but our experience finds significant commonality in the business and technical issues faced by these industries. One area of similarity is the need for both healthcare and TME to develop an omnichannel approach to improve customer experience. In a December 2016 study by Chief Marketing Officer Council, 49% of marketers stated that alignment between physical and digital customer experiences is selective at best.
TME businesses have sought a more efficient means of unifying customer experience (CX) across the enterprise ecosystem to dynamically serve content (and advertising) to the right person on the right device at the right time and place with brand consistency. Omnichannel presents a seamless integration between every possible channel that each customer could pass through. In healthcare, the extreme fragmentation across business lines—physician’s practices, health plans, drug dispensing, and medical equipment as well as channel discontinuity within a business line, cries out for a seamless omnichannel experience.
Disney delivers an exemplary omnichannel customer experience that seamlessly crosses the face-to-device to the face-to-face experience via an elegantly detailed and technologically augmented platform. First, Disney’s beautiful website is mobile-responsive. From there, Disney-goers use their phone and a Magic Band as their map, their wallet, their photo album and their room key. Want to know how long the line is for Space Mountain? Check. Need to know where the closest restroom is? The map is right there in your pocket and it’s not even a folded-up sweaty mess. And it all works together. Disney’s brand reputation for considering every detail is not spared in its state of the art omnichannel customer experience that spans technology and human interactions.
Vonage is looking at omnichannel and UCaaS (Unified Communications-as-a-Service) as implementable in the near future. How many times does a customer enter their account information only to have an issue? A customer service chat is initiated and the information is entered again. Inevitably, the customer has not reached the right customer service agent and gets redirected to, once again, enter their account information. Vonage CEO, Alan Masarek, knows that can and will be changed. That once the call or chat is started, the information is dumped into their CRM and accessible by any customer service agent the customer is routed to creating a more seamless service experience.
UPMC Health Plan is the second largest health insurer in western Pennsylvania and is owned by University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. UPMC Health Plan was one of the first insurers to make a significant investment in an omnichannel business model to improve customer experience for its members. The goal is to provide proactive inbound and outbound omnichannel customer support. Some of UPMC’s results include 27% decrease in inbound call volume, 96% customer multichannel satisfaction, and 93% chat satisfaction. Walgreens, the retail pharmacy, is also committed to developing an omnichannel experience where a customer can be online, offline, in line, on a phone, tablet, or computer and experience the same level of support and functionality.
Healthcare organizations are beginning a journey that TME companies have been on for some time where customer experience and service is crucial to growth. Both TME and healthcare firms have a long way to go to fully develop their omnichannel strategies and implementations, but it is a journey they must take.