By Rene Hermes

It’s hardly surprising then that as consumers we’re faced with an inconsistent user experience. Technological fragmentation often makes it hard for separate departments - let alone organisations – to recognise their regular customers. At the same time, disconnect content delivery can lead to growing customer frustration as their multiple activities, interactions and preferences invariably fail to register and combine across all these different channels.

The continual need to repeat or re-enter details has always been a key frustration for customers. Research shows that when organisations consistently recognise a customer they feel appreciated and ultimately more loyal. However when the recognition breaks down, we all end up feeling just like another number.

We believe that the latest generation of ‘multi-touchpoint’ Web Content Management solutions, can start to remove this barrier and instead deliver powerful, consistent and engaging web experiences for every customer - with content and service continuity across multiple channels. Multi-touchpoint content management will play a key role in reconnecting the user experience, particularly for organisations such as telecoms companies with their complex triple play offerings, or financial services firms that increasingly operate across multiple channels.

To achieve this, however, it’s essential to have the right content management infrastructure in place: it’s not enough just to deliver content – information delivery has to be bi-directional to allow organisations to offer more meaningful personalisation and contextualisation. It’s by combining personal preferences, social interaction activities, user ratings and clickpath data that today’s web applications can migrate towards more dynamic personalisation and context adaptation.

Such an approach makes good sense for customers, acknowledging their value to the business and using context-based personalisation to deliver truly relevant content based on their user profile, behaviour, the device that they’re using and their current situation. Because multi-touchpoint solutions retain details about user interactions from every online touchpoint, businesses can really start to speak to consumers in a more consistent voice, irrespective of the media or channel involved.

Multi-touchpoint also provides organisations with a more cost-effective way of engaging with customers, driving down the cost of managing and delivering digital content, and increasing conversion rates and revenues through more precisely targeted cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. It also means that separate departments will no longer need their own in-depth technical expertise to communicate across different touchpoints. Improved self-service applications will also empower customers to help themselves, either directly or through self-supporting communities.

From the marketing perspective, multi-touchpoint will be invaluable in improving the quality and consistency of brands thanks to its ability to support multiple channels and devices with a single core content offering. By also offering comprehensive social media integration with key networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, organisations can engage directly in discussions, make content freely available, and move towards a virtuous circle of engagement – with content informing user conversations which, in turn, stimulates new content.

Clearly this latest generation of multi-touchpoint content management is set to provide organisations with a powerful way to optimise their return on customer engagement. Instead of treating multi-channel as a barrier to content delivery, multi-touchpoint effectively treats each interaction as input for a more sustained customer relationship, cumulatively gathering knowledge about the customer and engaging consumers in way that creates added value for them while still delivering greater returns for the enterprise.

About the author

Rene Hermes is a senior international business to business marketing executive with demonstrated global marketing, business development and channel accomplishments across multiple markets (incl. telecommunications, utilities, banking, insurance, healthcare) and product categories (incl. databases, application development tools, business process management, customer relationship management, image analysis, and web content management). Rene Hermes joined Coremedia (www.coremedia.com) as Vice President of Marketing in May 2009 bringing more than 15 years international marketing and business development experience. Email: rene.hermes@coremedia.com.

About CoreMedia

CoreMedia enables enterprises to maximise the return on their web presence by creating a powerfully engaging experience for every user. Over 200 companies worldwide rely on CoreMedia’s technology, including Daimler, Deutsche Telekom, NEC, Nokia, Motorola, O2, Panasonic, Samsung, SEAT, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile and Vodafone. For further information, please visit www.coremedia.com.