Customer Experience has many layers of complexity, but one area that seems to be an afterthought is omnichannel decisioning. In this piece, Merkle’s James Craig shares how to fit omnichannel decisioning into your Martech stack and the ways to implement it.

AcquiaOpens a new window indicates that 82 percent of marketers believe their brands are meeting customer expectations; however, only 10 percent of consumers strongly agree that the majority of brands meet their expectations for a good customer experience (CX). Customer Experience has many layers of complexity, from website usability to knowledgeable, empathetic, friendly call center representatives to brick-and-mortar stores. Each touchpoint has an impact on the customer as well as your bottom line.

One area that seems to be a CX afterthought is omnichannel decisioning. Today, consumers use an average of six channels/touchpoints, with almost 50 percent regularly using more than four. Mostly every touchpoint available to consumers has been or has the capability to be supported by omnichannel decisioning. Having an integrated CX will reflect positively on your organization as you will be able to keep your customers happy regardless of their chosen channel of interaction. Wouldn’t it make sense to be proactive and make informed decisions on how your company’s touchpoints interact with your consumers? That is where omnichannel decisioning comes into play.

Learn More: Understanding Shifts in U.S. Consumer Sentiment During COVID-19

What Is Omnichannel Decisioning?

Decisioning is used to help businesses explore different scenarios by manipulating data collected from past events and interactions. For known customers, this includes facts and information the business already knows about them as well as how they are grouped with similar customers. It is then up to the decisioning engine to determine the next best call(s) to action for a given customer.

Omnichannel decisioning takes this one step further by ensuring that, regardless of which channel is used, the call(s) to action are consistent throughout the customer experience.

Where Does Omnichannel Decisioning Fit Within My Martech Stack?

In a previous article, I deemed the call to action to be at the core of an omnichannel marketing solution. This remains true, and they must be uniformly identifiable across the tools in the stack. There needs to be a mechanism driving which call(s) to action should be presented to a customer to improve his or her brand experience with consistent, unified messages.

That “mechanism” is the decisioning engine, which sits at the hub of your Martech stack. Your touchpoints are the spokes that should deliver the positive CX.

Omnichannel decisioning empowers your business by being both proactive and reactive to the ever-changing needs and wants of your customer. Any or all of your channels can request (or push) the next best call(s) to action for each customer or prospect based on first-party data, model scores, and customer journeys, and interaction history.

When Should Omnichannel Decisioning Be Implemented?

The short answer is, these days, it can never be too early. The components within your Martech stack must be intertwined to truly be omnichannel and have the capability to convey consistent messages to your audience. You will likely not be tackling all channels at once; however, with each channel will come invaluable insights to enhance your decisioning capabilities. Ask yourself these questions:

1. In which channel(s)/touchpoint(s) that your company utilizes do we already have a marketing presence?
2. What other marketing channels/touchpoints do we want to utilize?
3. Do we maintain a central repository of our marketing initiatives?
4. What is the source of the metadata for our calls to action?
5. Have we established a roadmap outlining the next steps on our marketing journey?

The answers to these questions will assist in building an implementation framework that:

a. Allows you to understand potential inconsistencies in your messaging
b. Determines a need for further centralization of customer interaction history
c. Helps target any existing channels that will need to be enhanced for omnichannel participation
d. Keeps the momentum going as future channels are integrated into the solution
e. Defines the strategic path for channel implementation

Learn More: Top 10 Digital Customer Experience (CX) Software Platforms For 2020

How Do I Get There?

About half of companies’ marketing efforts continue to operate in silos. With so many channels and touchpoints available to consumers to interact with a company, changing your marketing flow can seem overwhelming. But it doesn’t need to be if foundational milestones are established from the start.

1. Get buy-in from the top. There is no way this initiative can be achieved if it does not have sponsorship from the CMO.
2. Create a list of all your customer channels/touchpoints and rank them by revenue or traffic or even age, as older infrastructure may be more challenging to implement. This list will help determine the order in which your channels can be onboarded to the decisioning platform.
3. Understand the available resources you have that can be dedicated, at least in part, to the central decisioning effort. It may change how you approach the project (e.g., implementing channels one or two at a time).
4. Build a single ledger of calls to action that can be used across channels. This can and should be one of the first tasks accomplished to unify your marketing messages.
5. Identify the lifecycle stages a consumer may progress through on a given journey. This model will serve as a template for assigning proactive and reactive calls to action at each stage, for each channel.

As a guiding principle in this digital age, be the most thoughtful to your existing customers. You will need to manage calls to action for multiple audiences. Do not place more value on the unknown than on the known.

1. Your customer navigates to your website for the first time from a new device (“Unknown”).
2. Your customer is greeted with a “limited time only” promotion of 20% off the next purchase (“Unknown”).
3. Your customer is excited, but before taking advantage of this opportunity, decides to check on the status of a previously placed order (“Unknown”).
4. Your customer logs on to your website (“Known”).
5. After checking on the order, your customer returns to the homepage and finds a “valued customer” promotion of 10% off the next purchase (“Known”).
6. Your customer is now understandably upset. Your customer does not place an order and contemplates taking his or her business elsewhere (“Known”).

A favorable customer experience would be:

1. Your customer navigates to your website for the first time from a new device (“Unknown”).
2. Your customer is greeted with a “limited time only” promotion of 10% off the next purchase (“Unknown”).
3. Your customer is excited, but before taking advantage of this opportunity, decides to check on the status of a previously placed order (“Unknown”).
4. Your customer logs on to your website (“Known”).
5. After checking on the order, your customer returns to the homepage and finds a “valued customer” promotion of 20% off the next purchase (“Known”).
6. Your customer is ecstatic! Having previous positive shopping experiences with you inspires your customer to purchase even more (“Known”). Win, win!

The Decision engine can lead to smarter business practices, which can enhance the customer experience and increase loyalty. Understanding how your potential customer is similar/dissimilar to others, as well as what brought them to you this time and your ability to act in near real-time, will improve conversion and retention rates. Get buy-in from the top and make sure you understand any gaps or silos in your marketing infrastructure, so the smartest decisions can be made.