Recasting Business Communications in Today’s Omnichannel World

With rapid digital adoption rates across APAC, marketers in countries like Indonesia are struggling to implement successful omnichannel solutions.

We now live in an age where people communicate and interact through various channels: we read our e-mails, check our text messages, receive calls, ‘like’ social media and blog posts, share six-second videos and visit our favorite websites. These new communications channels create many new opportunities for organizations to reach and interact with their stakeholders.

Despite the convenience afforded by these technologies, they also add complexity and challenges in the way we work. For businesses, especially in Indonesia, a country with high social media adoption rates, this means having to decide the right message and to determine the optimal way to engage with employees and customers.

This challenge is further complicated by legacy: many organizations, either through acquisition or through unguided growth, have taken on multiple messaging and communication platforms, which has resulted in inefficient, costly and “unintelligent” systems. Messages are sent and monitored through several platforms without integrated analytics to help ensure the right messages are sent to the right people at the right time.

Customers are also becoming more sophisticated and demanding. They want companies to ‘know them’ and engage them accordingly.

Consumers provide personal information to companies, and what they expect in return is for these companies to treat them as individuals by customizing their communications and connecting with them on their preferred channels.

Frequently asked questions by marketers and brands in Indonesia are: “With so many communication channels, how can I reduce the complexity of managing these channels, and how do I promote brand and drive more revenue?” Or: “How do I switch from one-way communication to two-way conversations with customers?”

Indonesian-based organizations definitely need the capability to extract value from their conversations, turn information into knowledge and allow their systems to help them create communities to enable a clear line of sight to achieving their strategic business goals on a single platform.

Omnichannel marketing – the shift from “push”-based marketing towards more personalized communication with customers, through these many channels and on an array of digital devices – anticipates that customers may choose their preferred channel or start in one channel and move to another as they progress to a resolution. Marketers now need to provide a seamless experience, regardless of channel or device. Each piece of the customer’s experience should be consistent and complementary.

But there are not many organizations in Indonesia that have implemented omnichannel marketing to their customers, or to their people.

I had a recent experience, for example, with a complaint to a large bank. The call center asked me to register the complaint via e-mail, but because my complaints to the call center and the email agent were not linked, I was asked to repeat each report through both channels. Another time, an organization launched a promotion on its website, but when customers ordered the promotion through a call center, the staff there had never heard of it.

How many times do we feel annoyed by irrelevant advertising on our mobile phone? I am sure we would be glad to receive a personalized advert from a brand that we love or a product that we need.

These miscommunications don’t happen when brands are implementing omnichannel marketing that helps them understand customers’ preferred channels of communication and ensures the content being sent is informative and personalized.

Australia and Singapore are two countries in the region with intelligent omnichannel marketing channels and where it has been widely adopted. Brands and retailers are used to engaging customers across various channels in a holistic way.

For instance, it is common for a customer at an Australian bank to begin engagement on one channel and then transition seamlessly to other channels without having to start over.

One omnichannel communications solution is Whispir. It works by integrating individual messaging and communication platforms (e.g. emails, SMS gateway, voice, web, social, video, apps, etc.), initiating two-way communications, and tracking responses across channels in real-time. The solution is also cloud-based, which means it is reliable, easy to implement and cost-effective.

So a bank, for example, could use omnichannel communication solutions and customer data to send personalized offers (e.g. car, student loans, insurance) through customers’ preferred channels.

In today’s omnichannel world, companies are challenged by a lack of unified communication platforms and customer requirements for personalized messages sent through preferred channels.

In order to stay ahead in the business, Indonesian companies certainly need to deliver clear, responsive, and seamless communications to their customers across a variety of platforms.

*Image via Shutterstock

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