Multi-Channel CX Gets You In The Fight: A Word of Encouragement for Underdogs

In my inaugural blog post I wanted to write about a subject with which I am currently wrestling.

  How do small companies, upstarts, or those with less market share, compete with their larger rivals when it comes to the customer journey?

Since you cannot compete on price, brand recognition, media saturation, or anything else it would seem the only answer is to offer a better customer experience - one that is more personal (I'm excluding the other obvious answer of higher quality because without that what's the point?).  But what if you do not own the point of sale?  What if every direct customer interaction is with a distributor or big box retailer?  It takes an army of channel sales reps to reign in that beast, often with poor results (I say that as a former retail sales person who had constant interaction with channel managers).

  If a brand finds itself in this predicament the only option left to them are traditional channels (voice, email) and social channels.  But even with social channels, the big guy has the advantage because they have an army of enthusiasts who are more than willing to answer each and every question about your product - FOR FREE!

This is an opportunity for the underdog to leverage multi-channel CX technology and one that I think is overlooked.

  When we think about companies with great customer experiences we tend to gravitate to big logos who have spent years refining their image and experience.  Many of these big brands had the luxury of defining that experience prior to the emergence of technologies that level the playing field like Twitter and Facebook.  I know, I know - I just said that big brand evangelists are legion - this is true.  There is no silver bullet for the underdog.  The reason that multi-channel CX favors the underdog is that it costs less for them to deploy it, without the albatross of old, inflexible legacy systems weighing them down.  With cloud technology it is even faster and easier.  In a matter of weeks or months, the underdog can be directly engaged with their new customers and building that next generation of evangelists for themselves.

  One last thing that occurred to me as I debated this in my head (something I do a lot) is the cost of human capital associated with this strategy.  Let's face it, big brands take advantage of the fact that their crowd-sourced support strategy is nearly free.  The underdog has to carry the burden of a costly contact center to compete, right?  I suppose it depends on their culture.  As evidenced by last week's epic Twitter battle between T-Mobile and AT&T even CEOs are willing to login and join the fight.  With the flexibility of cloud-based multi-channel CX anyone can be an agent - anywhere.  CXOs can create a fun and rewarding culture by encouraging staff to check-in to a social queue for a couple of hours per day to respond to customer inquiries.  Bonuses or rewards like an extra day off might just be enough to get those employees who are already passionate about their product to share that passion via Twitter or Facebook.  That's one way for an underdog to kick start a multi-channel initiative.


To learn about my company's multi-channel offerings, click here