Call Recording Featured Article

In recent months, there's been a lot of talk of the omnichannel customer experience, which basically means having a presence everywhere a customer may want to use to get in touch with a business. It's designed to give customers as few pain points as possible—a customer who wants to talk to a business over social media but can't comes away frustrated—and it's done quite a bit of good for retailers and the like. Now, some regulated businesses are getting involved, and it's having unusual effects on those industries.

Regulated industries—industries like healthcare and financial planning, whose actions are closely controlled by the federal government—have discovered that they are not immune from the omnichannel movement. Customers are still customers, regardless of what the government says, and customers want the means to access a business by unusual channels.

The customer, these days, is increasingly connected and informed, and uses that power to get the best deals on products and find just the product to meet his or her needs. That's led to changes in the way stores handle customers, including offering free Wi-Fi access to allow the shopper to comparison shop with a mobile device out.

However, an omnichannel customer experience isn't just about pre-sales research and actual sales, it's also about post-sales support and getting customers ready for the next purchase. It's a complete customer journey, and that means there need to be points of contact at different sources to address issues that come up with the product in the days after the sale as well. That's where regulated industries are starting to feel the impact.

Customers want to be able to talk to businesses over different channels, whether buying a sweater, a surgery, or a stock portfolio, and that means regulated businesses need to expand omnichannel operations as well. An increasing number of medical apps are coming into play designed to bring more contact to unusual channels, and robot advisors are poised to manage six percent of investments in the United States just by 2020.

Regardless of regulations, customers want that omnichannel access. A business can be perfectly aligned with regulatory interests, but if the customers aren't satisfied, that business will fail. Satisfying customers becomes vital, and increasingly, customers want omnichannel access to a business. While it's a difficult balancing act to keep both customers and regulators satisfied, there's nothing less than market share at stake, so tools that offer a means to strike that balance become especially prized. That means opportunity for both regulated businesses and app makers that provide what the business so eagerly wants to provide to the customer.

Omnichannel is an increasingly important part of everyday operations. For some industries, it's easy to put in. For others, it's a minefield of regulations to cross first. At stake is the long-term health of the business itself, and an outcome well worth pursuing.