EAE News
Key factors for achieving perfect On/Off integration
09 de June de 2020
How can we effectively combine the benefits of the virtual world with the advantages of the real world? How can we integrate the strengths of both worlds within our companies to offer truly full experiences? While the digital boom is increasingly gathering pace in the economy, the in-person experience still has an irreplaceably important role to play. With this in mind, we have to ask ourselves how best to achieve an optimal integration between On and Off?
The Partner and Director of the Lukkap Customer Experience consultancy and lecturer at EAE Business School, Alberto Córdoba, discussed this issue in a conference entitled “On/Off Integration: the new differentiation space arising from the hybrid of the in-person world and the Internet”. Over the course of an hour, he gave an in-depth explanation of the strengths of each dimension, as well as giving a series of tips for integrating them effectively.
Alberto Córdoba
Partner and Director of Lukkap Customer Experience and lecturer at EAE Business School
Key features of pure digital companies
Before focusing on the topic at hand, the lecturer explained that his consultancy, Lukkap, specializes in the customer experience to help other companies combine the on and off worlds effectively. “The customer experience is the key to reinventing the world and even more so nowadays, when everything is changing so much”.
1 - Pain Solution
Having underlined the importance of the customer experience, Córdoba went on to give an overview of the key elements that have facilitated the success of pure digital companies such as Amazon, Airbnb and Uber. The first factor is pain solution, by which refers to the fact that, almost overnight, thanks to the ease of the Internet, these companies became the fastest and most effective solution to any kind of problem. The consultant emphasized that mobiles have become the main way that people look for immediate solutions online to problems of the offline world..
2 - End-to-end tracking
As well as the accessibility and speed of online service, the Internet has another key feature: end-to-end tracking. The lecturer uses this term to refer to the capacity that digital companies have to monitor with data all the actions performed by customers. “In contrast to physical stores, online businesses have access to a huge amount of data that enables them not only to streamline their operations and optimize their service, but also to provide a more personalized, enjoyable and fast experience”.
3 - Frictionless
Thirdly, online services avoid friction and generally guarantee a fast, direct service. “Pure digital companies make a lot of effort to ensure the shopping process is as direct and short as possible”, unlike often slow and tedious physical stores.
4 - Community
Last but not least, another critical success factor of pure digital companies is their ability and facility to create communities that connect customers to the brand and, most importantly, to each other
Key features of the in-person service
1 - Relationship
“In the digital world, we deal with data, not faces. Therefore, in pure digital companies, there is still more focus on the interaction than on the relationship. More a funnel vision than a customer vision. More a sense of invasive messages than sincere listening”, explained the consultant. As such, the relationship and the ability to improve it remains one of the most important features of any in-person service
2 - Humanity
Along the same lines, in terms of the relationship, another key feature is humanity. In a physical store, “we often leave processes to one side and make way for the empathy and sincere help that make shopping a far more satisfactory experience”.
3 - Touch & Feel
Córdoba emphasized that a large part of the shopping experience is based on touching and feeling the product, and the physical store, in contrast to online outlets, enables this fully. This is one of the main reasons that, despite the digital boom, physical sales still far exceed online purchases.
4 - Entertainment
Lastly, the EAE lecturer mentioned entertainment and the possibility of enjoying yourself in a shopping mall or store, as one of the key features of the in-person service.
So, bearing these key features in mind, what do we have to do to achieve effective integration?
“The key is to generate a single combined experience that fulfils the need more than ever before”. To achieve this, we have to take the 8 elements discussed above into consideration, combining them based on each company’s objective. As a result, we can attain integrated features such as “goal solution”, “forever relationship”, “simplicity” and “collective emotions”.
Moreover, the lecturer gave 3 tips that he considers essential for achieving the effective integration of the two worlds:
- Have a multichannel manager responsible for each of your customers
Train and assign a person to focus specifically on the relationship with each customer through every channel offered. - Unite the customer experience within a single journey
If we achieve a single customer journey, we will ensure that customer feels real satisfaction and wants to return.. - Integrating the company within the customer’s life
It is important to really know your customers to be able to integrate your services within their routines and day-to-day lives. By doing so, using technology such as virtual reality, you can enable a customer to try on a blouse from home without sacrificing any of the benefits of the two worlds.