RECASTING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN TODAY’S OMNI-CHANNEL ENVIRONMENT

TLDR

Omni‑channel marketing integrates all customer touchpoints to improve experience and performance, yet firms still struggle to implement it effectively. The study seeks to determine how firms can manage all touchpoints across channels in an integrated way to deliver superior customer experience and gain a competitive advantage. The authors outline key issues for firms—adopting a customer‑centric approach, unifying touchpoints, personalizing experiences, integrating channels, delighting customers, redefining physical stores, and embracing mobile marketing—to recast the customer experience.

Abstract

Omni-channel marketing refers to the synergetic management of the available channels and customer touchpoints to enhance the customer experience and improve performance. It has become a cornerstone of marketing strategy but putting it into practice is still one of the major challenges that firms face today. In this study, we aim to understand how firms can manage all touchpoints across all channels in an integrated manner to provide a superior customer experience and gain competitive edge. To do so, we identify a number of key issues that firms must consider before they can embrace the changes that their organizations need to recast the customer experience and obtain superior performance. These include adopting a customer-centric approach, unifying all touchpoints across all channels, delivering personalized customer experiences, integrating the available channels, delight customers across channels, redefining the role of the physical store and embracing mobile marketing.