Omni-channel customer experience for changing times
Customer experience is at the center of any user centric organization ., it helps them keep in touch with their customers regardless of whether touch point to their solution/application is a laptop, mobile, tablet or watch or for that matter many devices including augmented reality as well. Organizations are facing challenges in maintaining the code base across various devices and keeping the journeys uniform across channels (from where and what purpose the customer is accessing).
Who has the fastest time to market to offer a feature has always made a difference in the business world. Lets examine how current architectures are being modernized to leverage omni-channel solutions so as to a enable faster time to market whether it is a bank , e-commerce platform or any business that offers online experience for customers
We take any organization providing online access to customers these days , unless we work with the technology it is not easy to appreciate all the technology that it takes many layers of integrations with a lot of backend services to provide, say an account balance to the customer.
Lets use a bank as an example since we all use digital banking in many ways, Its importance has only increased with post pandemic situation where more unbanked started banking and age group that use digital banking has widened since more of our elderly started adding digital into their lives.
A few years ago not less than a decade ago , having a Mobile App along with Online banking are two important capabilities for a Bank along with other channels like ATMs and Branch etc. Often these channels provided different features and capabilities depending on how the experience was being tailored for the customer on that channel (eg: Online Check Deposit).
Providing similar capabilities on multiple channels meant that the struggle was on to unify the experiences across IT teams that work in multitude of areas. The most common strategy to stitch the fabric of technology in this case, was to use an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)that integrates with multiple services at the backend and provide similar responses to various requests that are coming from front end., having this seamless response is considered a fabric weaved together well.
Any of us who have been observing these kind of solution architectures for a while , know where the friction comes from., the relentless efforts by IT and governance teams to ensure that similar capability to be offered across channels is a gigantic effort that runs for many months and some times years to provide a certain capability to customer. This may be a simple expectation from a customer’s perspective as a competitor may have already started offering that feature (eg: Online Check Deposit).
The key to most of these features working seamlessly is the integrations done beneath the ESB layer that serves as a common layer across multiple channels (eg: Online Banking, Mobile Banking), ofcourse ESB coupled along with serious efforts from the UI/UX teams. The standardization and sanity offered by ESB through these integrations demonstrated the maturity of Bank’s technology in those days.
A lot has changed in the last decade as customers started using smart watches , tablets and social media extensively ., this only meant that the touch points increased manifold for any organization that does business online.
At a bank, for the IT that makes all the apps for mobile, watch , tablet, website, WhatsApp and Facebook integrations meant that the integration has become severely complex of features and updates for them through all these channels.Which also meant that the time it takes to release a feature across channels increased manifold.
So what we started seeing is a trend to outsource this complexity and standardize the approach so that the features are more modularized and customers still get near similar experiences across all the channels.
This resulted in solutions (both products and home grown) that offer omni-channel experiences., example: adding online check deposit feature now does not take a long arduous project so that the time to market is reduced.
Wait! what just happened, did all the complexity suddenly disappear?
No it only got transferred to the solution that offers each of these capabilities with a modular approach.
Also the integration which used to be at an ESB layer , now graduated to the omni-channel solutions that implements integration with the ESB. Since most banks use standard features like savings account, checking account, credit card etc, what it meant for omni-channel products is to build solutions with each of this module and customize as per bank’s processes.
Also the touch of creativity about how their website and app get rendered across multiple channels can be controlled by the bank and meet regulatory and compliance requirements as well with lesser effort.
The important decision to make regarding an omni-channel strategy is whether to build the solution from scratch in house, or to build the solution leveraging omni-channel products like eBankIT , Backbase etc that offer these kind of features. Again whether a product is the right fit or not depends completely on the industry of operation and how much business ready features are available from the omni-channel platform which will help reduce the time to market. If not readily available like for an Insurance solution, then this needs to be built in house from scratch with help of service partners.
The below questions can help make that choice:
- Does the cost benefit analysis suggest that going the route of an omni-channel solution with help of a product is better than building in house and makes sense for time to market?
- Does an omni-channel platform meet most of the features that are to be offered to customer? (eg: offering a live chat solution that integrates with help desk)
- Are the capabilities to enable omni-channel available with in the organization, if not is there a good service partner who can help leverage these capabilities?
- What kind of consumer devices the solution needs to be offered on today and in the future?
- If building an in-house solution is the answer to various questions, what are the parameters that serve the guideline to keep the omni-channel solution? (eg: single code base for front end catering to multiple devices)
and the list is certainly big based on the journey of an organisation.
So I do hope the outline above provides some crisp answers to why an omni-channel strategy may be needed and how the technology has changed over time with increasing focus on customer needs. If you are already on this journey, it would be nice to hear some comments about the experience, products and tech stack used and challenges faced. Looking forward to hearing from you!
