Since the early to mid-90s, communication channels have been emerging at a staggering rate. Business that had previously been conducted across only one or two primary channels less than twenty years ago – phone, mail order – is now happening across a dozen or more channels, and companies have been scrambling to keep up. The result has been a lack of strategic approach to communication channels, and companies finding themselves falling behind their customers.
The traditional solution has been to build channel-specific interaction points for customers and partners, including functionality within each channel that is often limited to technology constraints unique to that channel. This costly and time-consuming approach is reactive instead of proactive, and subsequently is certain to lag behind marketplace demands. This approach also makes it almost impossible for customers to begin a task in one channel then easily complete it in another channel, or get assistance from a customer service representative without having to provide the same information multiple times.
Instead, companies need to first create a shared foundation, including information, processes, and functionality that will feed – or ideally, drive – all channels. This strategy needs to encompass common services that the company wants to deliver to customers and partners, and then treat each and every channel merely as a window into those services.
Once there is a shared, common foundation for information, processes and functions communication channels simply become windows into the company, not confusing bolted-on appendages that are not synchronized.
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