What Is Omnichannel Customer Experience?

Robert Amberg:

This is strategy that works where we discuss practical solutions to company’s most complex challenges. I’m your host, Robert Amberg, chief marketing officer at Jabian Consulting. Let’s dive in.

Hi everyone. Welcome to the podcast. Today we’re talking about customer experience and specifically an omnichannel approach to CX. We’ll discuss what it is, how it’s different than on omnichannel marketing and how companies can put it into practice for improved results. We’re joined today by Callie Wheatley and Steven Lubel, both management consultants with Jabian Consulting. Callie, Steven, welcome to the podcast.

Steven Lubel:

Thanks Rob.

Callie Wheatley:

Thanks Rob.

Robert Amberg:

When we’re talking about omnichannel as a CMO, I immediately had in my head an idea of what that meant, but that’s not necessarily the whole story. So what is omnichannel in this context?

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, no. Callie and I have come up with a definition after really kind of sitting down and thinking about this. How this kind of all started was we both had an interest and a passion for this kind of work. So we said what’s a good way to explain omnichannel? The definition that we came up with after callous and callous going over and going over this, but so we decided that omnichannel is the strategy to connect all channels, creating a seamless, consistent customer experience that intersects all business functions to fulfill the desired customer experience, creating a competitive edge. That it’s very wordy and might be hard to understand, but what it kind of is how everything is connected, how everything flows fluidly so you as the customer really have no idea that all these little bitty parts are moving around to make your experience easier and more effective for you.

Callie Wheatley:

The goal is that all channels connect simultaneously on the back end, like within the organization. You’ve got everything connected from your ERP system all the way up to even like your social media. That way when the customer is interacting with you, it’s seamless to them and seamless meaning like they view it as one.

Steven Lubel:

Absolutely.

Callie Wheatley:

Like Steven said, you have the single view of the customer, but then also seamless as they move across channels. They don’t notice anything different. All it is to them is one company, one channel really.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, it should be, you know, kind of like an involuntary motion of, “Oh, I’m going to look at something on my phone.” Well yeah that’s the same experience I’m going to have in store or in an app. It’s kind of the all encompassed experience that I think consumers today are looking for. And it’s somewhat different than the way companies have been set up in the past where you had, say a product manager or someone who ran the catalog and then someone who ran the website.

Callie Wheatley:

Right.

Steven Lubel:

And then someone who ran a storefront and they all had a different view potentially of the same customer and didn’t talk. This is kind of the evolution of that you would say.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah, that’s what multichannel really is, which often gets confused with omnichannel. Multichannel is silo channels, like you said, if you have someone managing the website, someone managing social media, et cetera. They typically don’t talk across their functions. But then also the systems themselves don’t talk across each other like system to system. And so that gets confused with omnichannel because that’s kind of where omnichannel almost evolved from where it was the creation of all of these different channels, you know, as we came into the digital age. But it is a different experience for the customer as you interact with each of them.

Steven Lubel:

Right, so a good example of that, Rob, let’s say you’re at the office, I don’t know have the mouse for my computer, I got to run to Best Buy. Right? Well it used to be where you’d go online, you’d see that online and say, “Oh that mouse has in store. Let me go get it.” But when you got there, it wasn’t there anymore because they didn’t update each other. All the channels didn’t talk to each other. The one was going back and saying, “Oh that inventory is actually gone.”

The way this helps it now, so when you go on store and you click that and say, “Oh, this is in store pickup.” When you get to that store, that mouse will be there for you to purchase. It’s all like, you don’t even think about it. And it all works that way. That didn’t happen in the past. And for a customer experience, if you showed up at Best Buy and said, “Oh, this mouse isn’t there. Now, I can’t do my work today.” That is losing the credibility of that store for that experience.

Callie Wheatley:

And it’s a bad experience and that’s almost like the expectations today with customers. Which is kind of our job and why we like it, why we have a job. It’s these expectations now are so set. And I typically hate mentioning Amazon just because it’s overused, but it’s so true. Like they do a lot of things right. And so it’s almost like the Amazonification, if you will, of this age.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah. Good word.

Callie Wheatley:

I don’t think I made it up.

Steven Lubel:

Oh really?

Callie Wheatley:

But I’ll claim it.

Steven Lubel:

Okay. Registered.

Callie Wheatley:

The customer expectations are, also they’re ever changing, ever evolving, but they’re high.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

They know that they can, from Amazon, they can go to Best Buy or go to Amazon, and what they see on the inventory is true. And if they were to go in store, they’d know it’s there. Like you can trust it. When it’s not there or it breaks down, like the systems aren’t talking to each other, they’re mad because their expectations aren’t met.

Steven Lubel:

We’re in the age of choice. Right? Everyone’s doing something really well, right? How do you gain that customer advantage? So omni-channel is a way to have a really good strategy behind that is something that’s really important. When something seems so easy as, “Oh, they talk to each other.” I mean the stuff that happens in the back end that has to happen. Even example, when you return something to a store, how does that get put back into an inventory? And how does that relate back to a website or to an in store experience? Something that seems really easy to accomplish is extremely complicated.

Robert Amberg:

Let me ask you this. I won’t name the store because I actually enjoy going there. I go there on a weekly basis. My grocery store.

Callie Wheatley:

What if they’re listening?

Robert Amberg:

This is my grocery store. I’m certain they’re listening.

Steven Lubel:

Right.

Robert Amberg:

One experience I feel like they have attempted to do is, because I shop both online and for free pickup and then I’ll go in store and do my grocery shopping and invariably, and I use a loyalty card every time I go in, get the points, et cetera.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

Every time I check out without fail you always get like a couple of coupons that spit out, you know, when you check out. Every time the coupons are for exactly what I just bought.

Steven Lubel:

Sure.

Robert Amberg:

And not for say something that I buy frequently but maybe didn’t purchase this time.

Steven Lubel:

Right.

Robert Amberg:

Which tells me that they don’t necessarily, aren’t capturing my purchase history, but rather they’re just spitting out what I just bought. Like my customer information isn’t really that valuable. I feel like there’s maybe a lot of situations where companies are trying to, I assume they’re doing something that they feel is good for me because they’re giving me a coupon to have me repeat purchase something.

Steven Lubel:

Right.

Robert Amberg:

But it would be really great if they gave me the coupon either ahead of time on my, you know, on my smart phone.

Steven Lubel:

Right.

Robert Amberg:

So I could go shopping with or give me something that I didn’t just purchase.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, so there is a reason why that happens. They know that you’re going to come in and buy that product probably. Or let’s say it’s a gallon of milk, right? And you’re going to come and buy that at least once a week. Their ideas that you’re going to come in, if we give you a coupon for next time you come and buy that gallon of milk, maybe you’ll get some dessert with that or cookies next time because you know you’re going to save money on that product that you always buy. “Now let me go buy like, down the cookie aisle and you’re going to get some cookies that maybe you buy that a couple of times, they’re going to have that put into it, right? It’s a way that they can kind of start understanding what your persona is. I’m a cookie and milk guy. Now Rob’s coming in for some cookies today.

Callie Wheatley:

It’s kind of a slow way of seeing who they are. Yeah.

Steven Lubel:

So-

Callie Wheatley:

But that’s more of like an upsell tactic almost.

Steven Lubel:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

It’s like, “Hey, here’s a coupon because if you get a free gallon of milk, well then yeah, if you give the mouse a cookie and then maybe I’ll go buy a gallon of milk.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

Now I’m a cookie monster and a mouse.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah. Whatever you want to be Rob.

Steven Lubel:

You don’t know what Rob looks like. It’s a mixture of a cookie monster and a mouse, so.

Callie Wheatley:

The point is like each … Okay, so I have a coupon for a free something or discounted something, I can go, I can spend money elsewhere on something else. So yeah, it’s like an upsell tactic.

Robert Amberg:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

But what they could do to create like an optimal customer experience would to be proactive and it would be to capture your preferences. The omnichannel experience would be understanding you shopping online, what you’re searching, whether you buy it or not, that doesn’t really matter because if you’re searching, you’re clicking. They’re almost, they’re capturing your clicks and then they can use that into their system and say, “Okay, well if even if Rob doesn’t buy a gallon of milk, maybe he’s going to buy cookies.”

Robert Amberg:

Right?

Callie Wheatley:

Instead of giving him the coupon for the gallon of milk, he didn’t buy, give him the, proactively give him the coupon for the cookies.

Robert Amberg:

Right?

Steven Lubel:

Because you’re going to buy that milk regardless, so.

Robert Amberg:

Right. Okay. Makes sense.

Callie Wheatley:

Or you search like Nabisco and you really want Toll House.

Robert Amberg:

It’s like you guys know me too well.

Steven Lubel:

We follow you.

Robert Amberg:

That’s right.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

At unsaid grocery store. Right. I kind of gave a basic example, but you know, basically a storefront and a website. How is omnichannel different than just the storefront and the website?

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah, it’s all of the backend systems connecting. You have your storefront, your website is like the front part, right? That’s everything you as a customer, as a consumer can see and who you interact with. Those employees there or the website platform is like your front line of defense as an organization. Omnichannel differs because you include the middle and the back office of within the organization. You have your financing, your pricing, which is important in order to, as we were talking about coupons, that would be your middle office. Your back office, you have your IT, your technology, all of these supply chain systems that are talking together so that your in store experience matches your website experience and vice versa.

And then it also matches your expectations because if on the website or even if you’re interacting with a salesperson and they say, “Okay, we can get you your product in two days, free shipping.” Whatever it may be. But then you have the back end systems, or supply chain, warehouse, they’re not able to fulfill it within two days. Nor are they aware that they offer free shipping. Well then you get it in five days and you’ve already paid for expedited shipping. And again, that goes back to expectations not being met. Everything has to be connected from the front, what you see, to the back of what you don’t see, but the magic happens back there and you get your product somehow.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of what makes the customer experience, like you pointed out flawless and it’s a seamless transition. Now I think I want to, Callie if you disagree, please jump in, but not everything is talking to each other the exact same time. Right? If, I like to use the returns platform. Like when you send a return in, you get that confirmation email, that label gets sent to you, it goes to, you know, you take it back to the store, it goes into, back to the, let’s call it a warehouse, an inventory. For marketing purposes, maybe that the marketing doesn’t touch that, but other things are you connecting.

The way I like to think about it sometimes is you have a string of Christmas lights and two connect, another connect, but ones out. It all doesn’t have to be on at the same time for it to work. Right? But what’s good about this is when it needs to work together, something that needs to connect together, when that relationship needs to happen, then it does connect with each other. Right? I think it’s a, when you say, “Oh well, tell me what your omnichannel experience is.” And people are like, “Whoa, what do you mean by that?” Well, and we’re not saying tell me how everything connects together, which it should if it needs to, but I think that’s kind of the confusion sometimes.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah, that’s fair. And like we were talking about, you were talking about marketing, it’s like maybe they’re not on right now or during the shopping experience, but since everything can connect and is connected, they can capture your preferences or they can capture more of like your customer information so that marketing can go out and grab it.

Steven Lubel:

Right. Sure.

Callie Wheatley:

However they would.

Robert Amberg:

Well and from a marketing perspective on the returns, you know, I just had a return with Amazon, you know not to give another Amazon example.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah. Right.

Robert Amberg:

Obviously a very simple process. Very easy. I submit the return. I get the label. I drop it off at UPS and usually within 10 minutes after it’s hit the UPS system, I get an email that says, your return has been processed, you’ll have your refund, et cetera.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

It probably still hasn’t even left the UPS facility, but it’s in their system. It’s in their hands.

Steven Lubel:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

Right.

Robert Amberg:

Me as the customer, I don’t have to worry about it. From a marketing standpoint, you could get a follow up email that says, “Hey, based on your reason for return, sorry you didn’t like these sneakers, here’s another couple, two or three you might like, you know, different color, different sizes and style.”

Steven Lubel:

Yep.

Robert Amberg:

And that’s a marketing opportunity, upsell marketing.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

You know? But same idea. Having those systems talk is, is critical there.

Steven Lubel:

And that’s like, very high level is what a good omnichannel system does. Right?

Robert Amberg:

We’ve talked before about the term click and mortar.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

Explain what that is.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, sure. Click and mortar is a new retail, I won’t say tactic, but a new way to kind of have a customer have a different experience. Right? We’re living in an age now and Amazon, sorry for the third time we said it, but Amazon, you know, they’ve really taken the market on like the online experience, right? Retailers today, and you see this a lot in high end retail which is, that consumer really wants to have that person to person experience, that in store experience, but the company might not want to hold a bunch of inventory in a warehouse. They might not want to have to go through that, “Let’s stock stuff in our store.”

The click and mortar experience is you walk into a store, let’s say you’re going to buy a shirt and a few companies do this really well, but you want to buy a shirt, you walk in, you walk in this beautiful showroom, they offer you a beverage, you have a personal stylist for you and you try on a couple shirts. “Oh this fits me perfectly, this color. I love that.” Now I’m going to go to my iPad. I’m going to order this for you. It’s going to be at your door in two days. It has the experience of in store, let’s go shopping with the added experience is, “Oh I get something delivered to my door.” Which everyone loves to receive a package. Right?

It’s kind of that, how do we change the way we brand ourselves? A term that I like is clientelling and it’s an industry term for how do we gain customers to come into our store and stay there, have that brand recognition. And that’s what click and mortar stores do in order to kind of develop that new experience of no one’s really doing this. Let’s see if we can have attraction in the industry and in the market, so we can kind of be the next cool kind of fad experience at our store.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah, and similarly the concept of click and mortar, I mean it’s integrating the offline and online.

Robert Amberg:

Yep.

Callie Wheatley:

You’re in the store, you can buy online, gets shipped or vice versa. Like Warby Parker is a good example.

Steven Lubel:

Yep.

Callie Wheatley:

They were just, they only had a digital storefront when they first started. You only went onto their website or I guess their app.

Robert Amberg:

Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

And you bought online, ship to your door. But now they’re opening, they have all of these brick and mortar stores, so they’re kind of doing the opposite of what was happening just a few years ago where brick and mortar stores were closing their doors either because they didn’t get their online presence up or because they were moving fully online. But yeah, Warby Parker is doing it the opposite way. Where they had online, now they’re opening brick and mortar so that you can come in, have your personal stylist, try the glasses on in store and like really get that touch and feel of it.

Robert Amberg:

Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

While still getting the online experience.

Steven Lubel:

Right. And I think for a business aspect of it, like I said, it cuts down on inventory. You don’t have to … For job purposes it might not be the best for the economy for hiring purposes, but you don’t have to have that much actual person to work in your store because it’s all done really online.

Bonobos has another company that does it really well. They are men’s upscale retail store and they do it the opposite way where they, from Callie’s example, it’s called a guide shop. And like when you go in there, like you have the experience of, “Oh this is cool. I got a personal shopper. They’re going to give me a beer. They’re going to sit there and I’m really gonna build this relationship.” I use them. I go to the same guy, Alex, if you’re out there listening, thank you for the new shirt, but-

Callie Wheatley:

And the beer.

Steven Lubel:

And the beer. Yeah, absolutely. But I now have a relationship with my stylist. I guess I have a stylist now? Wow. Look at me. Look at me.

Callie Wheatley:

New Age.

Steven Lubel:

But in the long run, it’s kind of an easy thing. Where now I can … Also, when I’m at home and I said, “Oh, I needed that new white shirt because I’m doing a podcast today.” I’m not wearing a white shirt to anyone out there.

Callie Wheatley:

Nor can they see you.

Steven Lubel:

Right. And a good point. But if I, instead of going into that store, I can still go on my profile online and click that same shirt, those same measurements, and with the omnichannel, what it does is it stores that in their CRM. It stores that, “Oh this is going to ship to Steven’s address. He likes this.” And then they can kind of show me, “Oh Steven, you bought this shirt last year. Well we have a new style out. You might like this. Let me put that in your email that you get once every week, a type.” It’s all working on the back end as well, but having that customer experience in the front end and something like brick and mortar is so, so key because if not, I just go to Amazon or another big retailer and not even really care about it.

Robert Amberg:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

And didn’t you stay with Bonobos, was that the one where they only have a certain amount of stock or a certain amount of styles and sizes in store?

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

You go and try it on and you don’t walk out with the products. Right?

Steven Lubel:

Exactly.

Callie Wheatley:

You just go and try it on and it gets to still delivered to your doorstep.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, and they deliver it to you on their iPad in front of you and yeah, they have one of every size, color and then you kind of learn what you kind of like. Right?

Callie Wheatley:

Or you go with the inventory.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, inventory.

Callie Wheatley:

Or overhead.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, you cannot walk out with anything from that store.

Robert Amberg:

Everything comes shipped.

Steven Lubel:

Comes shipped in a beautifully packaged box and everything. I mean, it’s like the whole experience of … Now, I mean, I’m sure there’s some times when I’m like, “Oh, I really need that white shirt today.” And you probably wouldn’t go use them for that kind of purpose, but it’s just part of the experience.

Robert Amberg:

Awesome.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah. And there’s also car companies doing it now.

Robert Amberg:

Car companies where you go pick out your car and-

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, they’ll ship it to yeah.

Robert Amberg:

Interesting.

Steven Lubel:

You can go pick it out in their design shop. Tesla does it, I think really well.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah.

Steven Lubel:

You walk in.

Robert Amberg:

Yeah, I’ve never heard anybody walking out with a Tesla.

Steven Lubel:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

No. But even same with them, now they have a storefront. They didn’t always have that.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

Yeah. Good point. Good point. What are some other companies that you feel like does a really good job?

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, Nike does a really good job.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah, that’s all around good omnichannel.

Steven Lubel:

I mean yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

They do, because they kind of change the, like the way of stores a little bit as well. Now they’re almost like, it’s an interactive experience when you go into Nike. That’s kind of what they’re getting. It’s like you go in, you can be in the store, try it on. You yourself can purchase right from the store, whether it’s on the website because I mean you’re looking at size nine, you know, new Nike shoes and you go online and they’re right there.

Robert Amberg:

Absolutely.

Callie Wheatley:

I mean I do that. It’s like, or you browse another store or like another outlet or whatever to see if they’re there. But yeah, Nike is cool because they have like a full in store experience.

Robert Amberg:

Sure.

Callie Wheatley:

Or even like … I mean Sephora is going like full technology, like almost VR stuff.

Robert Amberg:

Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

They have like these magic mirrors that you go in-

Steven Lubel:

Yeah. J.Crew does it too. Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

Okay, yeah.

Steven Lubel:

I think they do. Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

They should.

Steven Lubel:

You can look in the mirror and you can see like Sephora what that shade of lipstick will look like on you.

Callie Wheatley:

What it looks like on you.

Robert Amberg:

Really?

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah. And then I think the one that’s pretty, I think we all drink it is Starbucks. It has a great just in app experience to where the mobile ordering and how that connects with your store and your order and how much it tells you how long it’s going to be and on time. I think it’s for any way that a company can really make your experience. I think this is the whole idea around omnichannel is the customer experience. Right? Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, there’s so many choices now for Starbucks. You know, they’re going to have to be like, okay, we got to make our way for, we come to buy our coffee, even though I don’t know who doesn’t drink Starbucks. It’s on every corner, but they have to keep these ideas of the experience for the customers. They do it really well.

Callie Wheatley:

Coffee is a commodity.

Steven Lubel:

It’s a commodity.

Robert Amberg:

Yep. Well, I feel like this is one of those things that, you know, can be a real win-win when you’re, when you’re doing something that enhances a customer experience, making it seamless, making it easy, making it delivered when and where and how they want. And at the same time doing things to enhance your ability as a company to manage inventory, to manage your supply chain, to manage your staff levels.

Steven Lubel:

Yep.

Callie Wheatley:

Right.

Robert Amberg:

You know what I mean? I think that that is a great win-win.

Steven Lubel:

Sure.

Robert Amberg:

That’s probably why it’s so popular.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah, I mean, as Steven mentioned too, it helps with operational costs, helps with inventory overhead and then ultimately … I mean the whole goal of customer experiences to create loyalty and drive advocacy and omnichannel just enables that at, throughout your whole customer experience life cycle. If you’ve got a loyal customer, they’re going to keep coming back to you. So that’s repeat purchases, but then if they like you, they’re going to tell all their friends, so then that’s additional customers you can bring on.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, that’s a good way to collect customer data and really kind of drive to maybe on the target a new market, a new sector and a new demographic. It’s just ways that for companies to run the backend analytics, which I mean, do I care how much analytics has run? As a consultant I do, but when I go to Best Buy, like am I looking at what’s happening on the back end? No. I want to know that my computer I’m buying is going to be there. But for Best Buy to say, “Oh, this person, this age range in this area of Atlanta bought this computer and oh, 10 other people bought this computer in the same time.” It’s easy for them to say-

Callie Wheatley:

Valuable information.

Steven Lubel:

“Oh well for inventory purposes, we need to keep stocking this. And if not,” so I mean it’s a solution where I think people think about, “Oh, well that makes really good sense. And yeah, that should happen.” But it can be complicated to kind of, to make it all work together if … So.

Robert Amberg:

Sure. We’ve talked a lot about omnichannel from a customer experience standpoint. I think a lot of people when they hear omnichannel, at least in my world anyway, they think omnichannel marketing.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah. Right.

Callie Wheatley:

Sure.

Robert Amberg:

What’s the main difference? I mean it sounds like fundamentals may be similar, but when we talk about the difference there, what are the main ones?

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah, you’re right. I mean the fundamentals are similar. The goal is that all the channels connect, it’s seamless for the customer. You have the same single view of the customer from your company’s perspective. But the thing with omnichannel marketing is it’s really more just the front end channels. It’s more of the social media, the websites, even your sales force could be one. It doesn’t necessarily include the supply chain or the pricing aspect of it, which is what we wanted to focus on too because I mean we think retail’s a great example. Omnichannel is going to be adopted by all these other industries as well. But we think that omnichannel is, it’s more inclusive than the front facing channel. I mean omni means all, so it’s like all channels with that, within an organization.

Robert Amberg:

Right.

Steven Lubel:

Sure. And when you’re, if you’re serving someone an ad, it’s making sure that you don’t … If they click on an ad to purchase something through email, that you’re not serving them the same ad on social after they’ve bought that you’re not serving them the same…

Robert Amberg:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

Great example.

Robert Amberg:

Great example.

Steven Lubel:

Okay, excellent. You know, as we mentioned, a lot of companies, I think, are moving towards this way. There’s a lot of reasons why that we’ve covered.

Robert Amberg:

Yeah. You know, if you are at a company where you want to put this in place in your business, you know, is there like an audit you can do? What are some things, what are the first steps that you can really do to, to make this happen?

Callie Wheatley:

Yeah. I mean high level really. It’s like you define the experience that you want for your customers based on who your organization is and match that to what your goals and vision within the company are. And then you assess that experience, you assess the current state experience against what you ultimately want it to be.

Robert Amberg:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

And then with an omnichannel it’s looking at that and assessing it from the customer’s almost lane, like the customer view, but then also internally. I mean you want to do both because the customer, the internal impacts the customer obviously, and so the customers might have a fine customer experience really.

Robert Amberg:

Right.

Callie Wheatley:

Like it could be okay, but then if your internal functions or communications or handoffs are breaking down, that’s going to be the indicator of like, well, maybe the customer experience isn’t bad now because we’ve been able to kind of like put a Band-Aid on it so customers don’t see it as much. But if you don’t fix your internal operations, then it will impact your customer experience.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah, right. Even as a company … And that’s good point. Even when it comes, like let’s say you’re a smaller company and you’re growing exponentially assessing how mature these different areas are and say, “Oh, we’re going to acquire this many new customers and we’re going to reach out to these new people and we’re going to have a new platform and all this, all this stuff to really assess, oh, can we handle this with our current situation?” And there’s ways to kind of say, “Oh, well, we need to have someone really kind of run the analysis on are our channels mature. Are we ready to make this move?

Robert Amberg:

Yeah.

Steven Lubel:

The last thing you want to do is make this move, have all this cool stuff, and then it doesn’t work on the back end, which in return won’t work on the front end.

Callie Wheatley:

Or similarly, if the customers don’t want it, you don’t need to build it.

Steven Lubel:

Exactly. Exactly.

Robert Amberg:

Awesome.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

Well, I think we’ve learned a lot today about omnichannel.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Callie Wheatley:

Hope so.

Robert Amberg:

We appreciate you guys being here. I think we’ve, of course you know, learned that Amazon is everywhere.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah.

Robert Amberg:

And I’m a cookies and milk kind of guy.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah exactly. And I like white shirts from retailers.

Robert Amberg:

That’s right. You have a stylist who knew.

Steven Lubel:

I have a stylist.

Robert Amberg:

Well, Steven, Callie. Thank you both.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah thank you.

Robert Amberg:

Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate it, and we’ll talk to you next time.

Steven Lubel:

Yeah thanks so much.

Callie Wheatley:

Cool. Thanks.

Robert Amberg:

Thanks.