Consumers look for more specific products. Your company must design a comprehensive strategy that meets all your needs, from digital to face-to-face. Discover 5 golden keys for your best business strategy.
If you think that your company only requires a digital or physical strategy to be competitive, you’re wrong. It does not matter if your company is in the retail, telecommunications or tourism sector; today, customers interact in multiple ways with companies. That integration is called multichannel.
The consulting company Everis and the Pan-American Institute of Senior Business Management (IPADE) conducted a study on the interaction of companies with their customers through multiple channels, from mobile phones and applications, computer and social networks, telephone service, to the face-to-face information and sale points.
Your company runs the risk of presenting a lag in the market if you neglect a strategy that includes multiple channels, said the director of Business Consulting Everis, Gabriela Baez.
In addition, the requirement of consumers by multichannel is present in the minds of companies: six out of 10 companies consulted expressed that customers expect to have that comprehensive strategy. However, the strategic transition takes a company, on average, between five and seven years.
The economic benefit of integrating multichannel will detonate a broader capacity for companies to follow up on their clients’ requests, in addition to knowing them better, making offers better aligned with their needs, and thus increasing the opportunities to sell more, Baez said.
Digital platform, indirect brake
Despite the close relationship between these channels, since 2013, consumers in Mexico require schemes with the better structure: four out of 10 consumers buy out of the digital domain, but 50% of consumers are part of the massive digital market, where 60 % purchase from a computer. One in 10 consumers are “Uber digital”, this means they are connected 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 85% make purchases via mobile. It is not only in Mexico, most countries of the world are connecting to the digital market day by day.
“We do not see a substitution of one channel for another, but a capacity to enhance the strategy. For example, a physical point with digital tools”, Baez emphasized, with the intention of better managing channels, increasing the capacity to retain the client and selling products or services that are more relevant to them.
Follow the best business strategy to improve your business
We present you with the best business strategy that Everis executives recommend for your company’s strategy with customers to improve significantly:
Link your channels. Digital and physical do not face, on the contrary: you must generate a link of interaction with all your channels, so that they are strengthened, because they are not subordinated, but complement each other. If you maintain a variety of channels, this will allow your company to continue to be relevant to different customer segments, particularly in Mexico, where the digital divide keeps broad sectors of customers in the “analog” world of personal or telephone interaction. Some transactions.
Incorporates new tools. Add big data and analytics to your existing IT elements. With this you ensure customer collection points at different times of your consumer trip, so you will always be trying to understand their needs.
Use your leadership skills. This comprehensive initiative is so broad and covers several areas that it is impossible to achieve without the support of senior managers, in addition to well-defined roles on who will manage the multi-channel strategy.
Manages talent. If the channels are divided, it is important that you incorporate people who know how to make crossings between the different routes. But not only that: you must make the most experienced workers with the most open to new forms of work. It generates a lot of frustration for the old employees not to learn the new thing, and for the recent graduates, it is frustrating that the strategies do not change faster.
Generates alliances. To achieve multichannel, you not only need to link your channels but those of third parties. This goes from having the presence in digital points, such as a loyalty program, to a point of sale.