Nothing is siloed anymore. All channels must work together and work harder to make sure customers get the optimal experience.
A good starting point is to map out the whole journey. Get all the people responsible for all channels in a room to brainstorm this.
The session should be run by a customer experience team, by this I mean a copywriter/content lead and a UX lead. A designer would be good, but they're not as critical at this stage.
Get your Sharpies and Post Its ready, make sure you've booked a big room for at least 2 hours and bring your phone to take pictures of the walls.
List customer entry points; from social media and online to call centres and in store.
From here, you should be able to determine what people need to know next. Social media can only host so much information, so you should probably have a landing page with info and a CTA into a buying journey.
For the information pages, what do people need to know. For example, product info, warranty, buying process and Ts&Cs. Don't forget to include other channels that may point to this page and what the customer knows at that point.
The buying journey for online is very different from the one face-to-face in a shop or on the phone.
You need to note all the possibilities, for example, is the product available in a customer's area or what if payment fails - what's the next best action.
It's also a good idea to think of all the possible errors. For example, do they need to enter a phone number, is the number validated, what do we do with this info, how is it secured, do we need a legal statement.
Once you've gone through the whole buying journey, from registration (if needed) to payment, then what happens.
It's a good idea to then move to the CRM journey. Map out the welcome, nursery, in-life and retention emails or texts.
If everyone is aware of the whole journey from top of funnel and the whole lifecycle, and the whole strategy from the people responsible for these channels, it's much easier to design a seamless journey that surprises and delights customers.
A copywriter will know the target market, what level of awareness they have, where they've come from, where they're going, what they need to know and what you want them to do.
You get the added bonus of everyone aligning on what the objective is and the approach.
Before doing anything, make sure you get this journey map, at least! Even if you're just updating, map out the journey. It makes life easier. And, in my experience, no one has done it before, so you'll get loads of gold stars, recognition* and a pay rise**.
* subject to status
** this scene was created for entertainment purposes
