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Cross-channel — multi-channel or omnichannel?

First, a hier­ar­chy must be made between the three channels: 

• there is an evo­lu­tion from mul­ti-chan­nel to cross-chan­nel and from cross-chan­nel to omnichannel.

The arrival of the Inter­net has led to an exten­sion of chan­nels, par­tic­u­lar­ly dig­i­tal ones: 

• web­site,
• e‑mail,
• mobile appli­ca­tion,
• SMS,
• social net­works, etc.

It is essen­tial to keep this ele­ment in mind to under­stand the rise of multi-channel. 

By chan­nel, we mean all the inter­faces (phys­i­cal or vir­tu­al) that allow the cus­tomer to meet the brand.

Multichannel, a response to the multiplication of channels

There was a time not so long ago when cus­tomers and com­pa­nies came into con­tact with each oth­er in 4 ways:

• the store, the tele­phone or fax and postal mail… let’s for­get about the Mini­tel

From multi-channel to cross-channel

The cross-chan­nel strat­e­gy is an exten­sion of the mul­ti-chan­nel strategy. 

While mul­ti-chan­nel strat­e­gy approach­es the dif­fer­ent chan­nels sep­a­rate­ly, cross-chan­nel strat­e­gy devel­ops by tak­ing into account all dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels in a syn­chro­nous way.

Today, most cus­tomers use sev­er­al chan­nels at the same time in their pur­chas­ing process. Many peo­ple, for exam­ple, do research on e‑commerce sites before going to buy prod­ucts in stores. 

To say that cus­tomers do not use the same chan­nels should not for­get that each cus­tomer uses sev­er­al chan­nels. Indeed, no cus­tomer is a one-chan­nel customer. 

  Cross-chan­nel allows you to gen­er­ate cus­tomer jour­neys that involve sev­er­al chan­nels in succession.

The com­pa­ny must cre­ate bridges between the chan­nels. The idea of “gate­ways” is at the heart of the “cross “chan­nel.

Omnichannel

This is the third stage of the rocket. 

While mul­ti-chan­nel is based on the sep­a­ra­tion of chan­nels and cross-chan­nel on the inte­gra­tion of chan­nels, omnichan­nel con­sists of merg­ing chan­nels to uni­fy the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. It’s not just a mat­ter of offer­ing sev­er­al chan­nels, or mak­ing sure they are com­ple­men­tary, but of going fur­ther by seek­ing to offer the cus­tomer a glob­al, uni­fied, seam­less experience. 

The ser­vices that are offered in-store are also offered online: there is no dif­fer­ence between the chan­nels. The bar­ri­er between phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal is disappearing. 

  Where cross-chan­nel con­tin­ues to think pri­mar­i­ly in terms of “chan­nels”, omnichan­nel thinks pri­mar­i­ly in terms of cus­tomer experience! Omnichan­nel is based on the fact that con­sumers use dif­fer­ent chan­nels all the time. They are con­nect­ed.
A con­sumer who goes to the store car­ries a smart­phone. The objec­tive of an omnichan­nel strat­e­gy is to design an enriched cus­tomer expe­ri­ence that starts from this real­i­ty. Con­nect­ed stores (with Wifi access, dig­i­tal wall, dig­i­tal kiosks, QR code, dig­i­tal mir­ror, etc.) are the per­fect exam­ple of what omnichan­nel is. 

Fash­ion-to-mobile, which con­sists of flash­ing prod­ucts on a cat­a­log with one’s smart­phone to buy them on one’s mobile, is anoth­er exam­ple of an omnichan­nel device. 

 

 

 

 

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