Getting out the same message so the customer has the same experience no matter where it comes from within your company should be easy in theory; after all, it鈥檚 coming from the same place. But we all know theories don鈥檛 always translate into practice on a daily basis.
Effective omnichannel marketing requires content alignment and delivery across all marketing channels鈥攊ncluding online and offline鈥攕o the customer has a comparable experience no matter where they interact with the organization. The reality is, creating this is a much more difficult process than you might suspect.
What鈥檚 the reason for jumbled messaging? A breakdown in communication can occur for numerous reasons, but one of the biggest obstacles omnichannel marketing faces is dealing with the silos within a company.
What are content silos?
A silo is used for describing a separation within an organization, specifically when it occurs between different departments and business functions. Each department or function has its own way of doing things, goals it must accomplish and objectives it must meet.
This occurs at the larger level in an organization, such as between the sales, marketing and finance departments. It occurs on a smaller scale too, such as when an email newsletter goes out to a customer without the latest product launch information that was added to the website.
The impacts of silos on omnichannel marketing
With omnichannel marketing, operating within silos can have a negative impact on the user experience. It creates a fragmented customer experience and interrupts the customer鈥檚 journey.
For example, let鈥檚 assume a customer opens up a help ticket online through a chatbot on your company鈥檚 homepage. The chatbot can only take the customer so far with help, so the customer must continue the conversation by calling a customer service representative. The representative may not have access to the ticket or information yet because the chatbot is run by another team that鈥檚 not connected with the same system as the representative鈥檚. It鈥檚 frustrating for the customer because they have to start the conversation all over again.
Silos can also lead to missed sales opportunities. Like the example above, if a customer is frustrated by their customer experience, it can mean taking their business elsewhere.
Internally speaking, silos in omnichannel marketing create wasted resources and redundant work. Using the chatbot and customer service representative scenario above, now the customer service agent has to input all the customer information again when the information was already captured once.
Steps for unifying your content management approach
The good news is, silos don鈥檛 have to be the norm. When a company like yours chooses to address these head-on, the result is a better omnichannel customer experience.
- Align on company goals: It may take a cultural shift, but one of the most important steps a company can take is creating alignments on goals throughout the touchpoints of the customer journey. How do you do this? By encouraging an environment of collaboration and communication across departments and functions.
- Take part in data sharing: A spirit of collaboration can mean sharing data across teams. This may involve technological upgrades and seamless integrations, since many organizations don鈥檛 have an infrastructure in place to accommodate data sharing. Whether it鈥檚 customer tracking or shopping history, data sharing can provide a singular view of the customer across many company functions. Plus, you need this for creating a more personalized customer experience.
- Map out customer touchpoints: Your company may talk quite a bit about the customer journey, but does every department (besides marketing) know their role in the customer experience? It鈥檚 important for each function to understand how the customer is at the center of the user experience and all the ways the customer interacts with the company brand. This is where data and business intelligence teams can have a major impact too, because they can share customer insights and shopping histories.
- Establish a cross-functional team: Your company can support breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration by creating a team or committee specifically focused on cross-functional improvement and the customer experience. You can put goals in place and use metrics to track the outcome.
How Brightspot can help improve your content management approach
If your goal is a cohesive omnichannel experience, Brightspot can help in multiple ways. For one, our content management system, designed specifically for omnichannel success, features an intuitive back-end experience along with native omnichannel capabilities. This combination facilitates simple content creation and the ability for team members to optimize and easily distribute.
Brightspot also offers headless or decoupled CMS options so your company can push content to any device, no matter if shoppers are online, in an app, or using another channel. A headless CMS also gives the option of distributing content across multiple channels while collecting customer data from those touch points.
Breaking down silos and creating a cross-functional culture is possible with the right technology in place. When you implement these technologies and focus on a seamless omnichannel experience, it results in a massive benefit鈥攂oth internally and for your customers. The benefits encompass various aspects, including enhancing efficiency across all teams, removing process redundancies, streamlining content approval workflows, centralizing data for all stakeholders, composing a 360-degree customer view, fostering a more personalized customer experience, and achieving cost savings. Most importantly, your customer can have the optimal experience no matter what their journey looks like.