At the last Fórum E-commerce Brasil, the term omnichannel came up in at least 50% of the talks. Along with lead segmentation, it was the standout concept of the whole event, hailed by leading professionals as the solution for e-commerce and for retail in general. If you break down the word omnichannel, what you arrive at is total presence, on every channel. But what does that mean in practice? That you need a presence on Facebook, a Twitter account, a website, a physical store, TV, magazines, YouTube, email, Instagram, a mobile app, and so on and so forth. And, on top of that, that you need to be active on every possible platform. Does that sound right to you? You need to be consistent across all your channels. But what are these channels everyone talks so much about? Aren’t there still places waiting to be discovered or created? In terms of real costs, resources, and results, omnichannel is not an achievable concept.
We need to get rid of the mindset that there are different channels and that you are obliged to be on all of them. No matter how you communicate with your customers, it all needs to be part of a single effort. Omnichannel is not integrated communication across several channels. That is called integrated communication :) Retailers have been chasing ubiquity over omnichannel when they should be chasing differentiation and relevance. By trying to be everywhere, brands end up being nowhere when it comes to attractive offers, and however hard they try, even their communication and customer service end up totally inefficient. Not every aspect of digital and physical matters to everyone. What delivers real results is a deep understanding of your customer’s behavior, and focusing on and prioritizing the strategies and platforms that truly matter to that customer and no one else. Only once you achieve this can you guarantee a truly seamless experience across systems, payments, and service. Your customers don’t care about channels; they care about rich experiences, solutions that make life easier, and attractive terms, and they want their problems solved no matter where they are.
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