'In this competitive landscape, every business wants a customer-centric approach’

The e4m The Independent Digital Agency Connect (iDAC) 2023 brought together independent agency owners, founders and leaders to share ideas, insights and best practices. One of the ‘Leader’s Discussion’ during the day-long event delved into the topic of ‘Omnichannel Digital Experience: The Path to Value’.

Anjali Malthankar, National Strategy Director & Head of Gipsi the HI + AI Insights Division, Tonic Worldwide, chaired the session that comprised Jateen Kore, Head of Digital, Wondrlab India; Mehul Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, SoCheers, and Pradeep Kumaar, CEO, Neil Patel Digital India.

Speaking on the importance of omnichannel, Kumaar said, “In this competitive landscape, every business wants to focus on a customer-centric approach. They want to feel that every customer has been focussed upon with personalisation. Hyper-personalisation would be best for all their customers. So multichannel will be acting in a silos model but when I say omnichannel, it has some kind of integrated connection, it focuses more on the customer journey, it will tell about the customer’s buying experience and retention, and we can make a customer not to feel left alone, even post-sales. A seamless experience would be much better, even for pre-sales and post-sales.”

Kore added, “We are in a hyper-connected world. People do not want to wait for long. People expect everything to be fast. In fact, people take it for granted, to the extent that any consumer across any industry would expect things to be taken care of. I think bringing the thinking of omnichannel helps achieve that. Having handled some of these experiences of transition from analogue to digital, I can safely say that a lot of self-assessment is required before you go down this journey. The importance lies somewhere between there, right? Whether the business demands it and from a consumer point of view, is it something that you are making essential? So, one has to be very clear in the direction in which you are going because it requires a lot of investment and a lot of commitment and human resources. I think I would place the importance on brands and for partners like us, who are consulting brands to go down this journey to be very clear of these aspects.”

While Gupta joked that his fellow panellists had covered most of the major points, he did mention that in today’s age, omnichannel is important from all industry standpoints to build value from a customer’s standpoint. He explained, “So, it becomes important that the customers want to know and the consumers don’t want to be bombarded and they want ease. The journey and the experience to purchase needs to be super easy and they should remember it. That helps them to come back to the brand.”