Due to exceptional interest and demand for more insight following our omni-channel customer experience management paper published last month, we've created an extended whitepaper on the topic. This focuses on the benefits readily accessible to companies who embrace omni-channel, differentiating from other publications largely focusing on the disasters that might befall those who don’t.

This paper’s title talks about preparing for an omni-channel future.  We examine what a truly omni-channel experience should feel like, why it’s good for business and the steps needed to achieve it.   Don’t imagine for a moment that the future is a long way off, in very many ways the omni-channel future has already arrived: the omni-channel consumer certainly has, moving seamlessly from device to device expecting the organisations they choose to interact with to do the same. 

Successful early adopters of omni-channel have embraced a key characteristic of the approach: they have focused on the customer ahead of technology. Offering several channel choices isn’t enough in itself - these channels must be connected and organisations must be able to follow their customers on their journey from one channel to the next. Companies who truly do this well will impress their customers, keep them and build brand advocacy, with substantial evidence to prove that when served in an omni-channel fashion, consumers also spend more.

These scenarios demonstrate customer centric approaches to common processes in different B2C industry sectors. Each reflects a customer experience that any organisation would do well to aspire to. All well and good, but they also reveal very real commercial benefits on offer…