The Funnel Doesn’t Care About Customers; The Funnel Only Cares About The Funnel

There are two sides to customer engagement and relationships that need your attention. There’s the experience customers have today of which they endure because it’s their only choice. On the other side is the journey that customers prefer and actively seek out. There is an experience divide that exists right now. The size of the gap is also a leading indicator for potential competitive and market disruption.

For incumbent businesses, i.e. those that have to adapt legacy touch points and journeys to modern standards, CX is absolutely vital. Customers are most likely hacking your journey to work for them or worse, exploring more intuitive journeys of your competitors.

This is why investing in customer engagement and experience is much more important than ever before. Customer expectations and behaviors continue to evolve. By their very nature, they bend and break conformity to find ways to discover the things that matter to them based on their intention and need in real time. While you map customer journeys, assess touch points and evaluate investment opportunities in technology, resources and models, customers are moving on, expecting new experiences and no longer conforming to past standards.

Here’s the thing, customers don’t see departments, they see one brand. Yet, even in an era of advanced media and marketing technologies, strategists continue to see customer journeys as Legos, where they remove older blocks or simply add newer blocks to existing foundations. People move on. They do so because alternatives become more desirable than compromising to everyday mediocrity.

This is the long overdue promise of omnichannel and the new order of integrated customer experiences.

Omnichannel offers the promise to unite disparate efforts for an approach that's integrated, consistent and complementary. To do so requires a new vision and philosophy—not just technology stacks and data platforms, but to see and think about new possibilities differently.Blinded by Funnel Vision

With every new technology and the new opportunities they represent, businesses instead tend to fall into the rigmarole of the familiar and mediocre. Meaning, businesses bolt on new technologies to existing processes to move things forward incrementally. Instead, executives should challenge convention to push and open their comfort zones to learn and experiment with how their brand can earn and sustain relevance with a new generation of connected customers.

The challenge of omnichannel customer experiences is that it is still largely governed by disparate teams. That design inherently contributes to fractured customer experiences throughout their journey. Just because businesses check all the trendy tech boxes doesn’t make an omnichannel strategy. Just because brands are present in every relevant channel doesn’t mean they’re integrated and consistent. Unless you’re specifically aiming to serve customers and unite the buy and own sides of the journey, customers are not going to experience consistency. Compare a customer's experience with hyper-personalization engagement at the beginning of their journey and then in time of support, having to contend with frustrating voice-activated IVRs in contact centers. This just one of many experience gaps that exist today.

While we all talk about how we need to break down silos or how the funnel is dead or how new technologies represent change, we’re still doing what we always have...even with new technology afoot and new CX initiatives gaining gorund.

No matter how ambitious we get with new technology, it doesn’t matter. Without aligning with a bigger mission or vision with what we are trying to do – something that is going to matter to people – we are just managing businesses the way we always have. We are not moving in any new direction.

Every conversation about efficiency and scale is still really about the funnel and sending customers to and through it en masse. Whether it’s customer services/support, advertising, sales, marketing, ecommerce or direct and whether it’s via email, web, social or mobile, each operate independently against varying and perhaps even conflicting standards and outcomes.

Customer Experience is the New Advocate for Omnichannel

Customers though demand something more and as a result, customer experience is becoming the new champion for omnichannel. In fact, I’d argue that customer experience is fast becoming the “north star” for executives. To move in any new direction takes leadership. CMOs, CDOs, CIOs or the C Suite in general, must now assume the role of trailblazer to innovate or disrupt or even hack the future of CX.

It’s time for leaders to embrace that marketing and CX have evolved because the customer has choices and many of those choices deliver intuitive, personal and value-added experiences.

This means that CX and marketing are no longer the sum of disparate departments responsible for the touch points that define the journey. Technology stacks, CX and marketing strategy, and customer data, must align around new leadership to personalize, integrate and scale modern experiences!

Why?

Customer experience is the sum of all engagements a customer has with your brand in each touch point throughout their journey lifecycle.

True omnichannel must become the new funnel and the new foundation for integrated, meaningful, and productive customer experiences.

This change starts with recognizing that channels are just that...channels and not solutions in of themselves.

The magic and ultimately the competitive advantage for any brand unfolds because omnichannel strategies are designed not only to work together but also guide the customer journey in ways that are intuitive and device agnostic. New models are necessary of course. But nothing can take shape without vision. And that vision will drive innovation in marketing and customer experience where brands and customers mutually benefit.

Brian Solis, Digital Analyst, Author, Keynote Speaker

Brian Solis is world-renowned digital analyst, futurist and business advisor. He is also a sought-after keynote speaker and an 8x best-selling author. Brian's research and work focuses on digital transformation, innovation and disruption, experience and service design, CX, and culture change. Invite him to speak at your next event or bring him in to your organization to challenge and motivate colleagues and executives.

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