Communication Silos: Everything B2C Marketers Need to Know | Fueled Guest Post

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Have you ever encountered a situation where your experience with a brand is disjointed and inconsistent across various touch points?

A fragmented experience like this can lead to dissatisfaction and have a negative impact on customer loyalty.

The culprit? Internal communication silos leading to misalignments that wreak havoc on the customer’s experience.

In this three-part blog series, we’ll explore how communication silos lead to disconnects in the customer journey and guide you through practical steps to building a multi-moment customer engagement framework.

In part 1 of the series, we’ll look at how disconnected marketing can damage a business and how to identify siloed communications within your organization.

Let’s get to it.

 

Part 1 – Siloed Struggles: How Disconnected Marketing Hurts Your Business 

Many businesses struggle with a fragmented customer experience in today’s complex marketing landscape. Imagine you’re scrolling your Instagram feed, and BAM – you see an ad for the latest {insert cool product here!}. 

So you click the ad (knowing all too well that the performance marketer on the other end will have the best day ever if you decide to buy today) expecting to get more details about {the neat thing}. 

However, to your dismay, when you land on the site, the experience is totally different from what you were expecting based on the ad. 

The messaging is off. 

The branding is completely different. 

You’re Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and are not in Kansas anymore. 😵‍💫 💫

It’s a symptom of a much larger problem: siloed messaging and communication strategies within, oftentimes, disconnected teams. 

 

The Siloed Communications Problem

Siloed communication journeys happen when messages sent lack the context of where the customer is in their journey with the brand.

The result? A jarring and disorienting customer journey that feels impersonal and undermines your brand’s overall presence. 

But how does this happen? 

It can be caused by a lack of shared goals amongst teams, a lack of connected platforms, or a lack of integrated technology. For example, engineering is in charge of push notifications, while email and SMS are under the marketing team’s purview. 

Each team has different goals for their messaging strategies. This results in teams that cannot share data seamlessly and are likely unable to track a customer’s behavior through various touch points. 

These discrepancies can often force teams to adopt outdated and generic messaging approaches, such as batch and blast emails, redundant messages on multiple channels, or triggered messaging to urge customers to complete an action. 

Siloed communication strategies can deliver irrelevant and disconnected messages, leading to a poor customer experience, creating data challenges, and furthering the gaps between internal teams.

 

Customer Experience Issues: A Broken Journey

The most devastating consequence of siloed operations is a disjointed customer experience. Here’s how it can negatively impact your brand:

• Inconsistent Brand Messaging: For good reason, customers don’t connect with brands (or people) that appear untrustworthy. Imagine a customer encountering a playful and informal brand voice on social media, followed by a dry and technical tone in an email. This inconsistency creates confusion and undermines brand trust. 
• Irrelevant Communications: When messages don’t align with customer needs or interests, they annoy. Customers who have already purchased a product shouldn’t be bombarded with emails promoting the same item. Irrelevant communication leads to frustration and can damage brand perception. An unsubscribe rate, while an obvious marker, won’t account for those who have tuned out or developed negative brand associations and not hit unsubscribe. 
• Missed Opportunities: Siloed structures make it challenging to nurture customer relationships and drive conversions. Using the previous example, imagine a potential customer who has shown interest in your product on social media but receives no personalized follow-up. This missed opportunity weakens the customer connection and makes it less likely they’ll convert or become a repeat buyer. Silos hinder the ability to nurture leads and build long-term two-way customer relationships, ultimately impacting your profitability.

 

Marketing and Data Challenges: A House Without a Blueprint

Communication silos don’t just create customer experience issues; they also make marketing efforts less effective and hinder data-driven decision-making. The following are challenges that can occur as a result of messaging siloes. 

Fragmented Customer Data:

Valuable customer insights like purchase history, browsing behavior, and preferences are scattered across disparate platforms within different teams. This fragmented data makes it challenging to gain a holistic view of the customer and effectively personalize marketing efforts. 

For example, your customer browsed shoes on the website and abandons their cart. Without a unified view of customer touch points, the marketing team may have missed an opportunity to send a targeted email with a discount code to nudge them toward completing the purchase. 

Limited Personalization Capabilities:

Tailoring messages to individual needs and preferences becomes challenging without a unified view of the customer. Customers expect the brand to understand their unique needs and interests. 

Generic messaging with a one-size-fits-all approach lands flat and is often not delivered on the correct device or at the most opportune time, rendering your efforts far less fruitful than they could be. 

This is the biggest loss to siloed messaging because the results are in a well-connected environment where personalization becomes genuinely magical for you and your customers. 

 

Disparate Analytics and Reporting:

Measuring the success of marketing campaigns becomes complex when data lives in separate systems. 

For example, it’s difficult to understand the impact of an email campaign if web analytics data isn’t integrated with email insights. You are flying blind, spending money on marketing initiatives without understanding their return on investment.

This also makes it difficult to optimize campaigns and allocate resources effectively. 

 

Internal Team Silos: A Broken Chain

Behind every communication silo, you will likely find a myriad of internal team silos. When teams work in isolation, it can lead to feelings of disconnection and a lack of ownership. 

Internal team dynamics are like a party planning committee without a plan. 

If we each tell guests parts of the necessary information or conflicting information, how many guests do you think we will need to invite to get at least 50 to the party? How many of us are enjoying ourselves when we all get to the party? Very few. 

Just imagine the frustration when all of you show up with a different number of cupcakes… 

Like the lack of communication in the planning committee spills over into the guest experience, internal team silos can cause limited collaboration, inefficient operations, difficulty measuring success, and poor customer satisfaction. 

Here are some additional problems that occur due to siloed internal teams.

Limited Collaboration:

When teams are vertically aligned but horizontally fragmented, it hinders providing a seamless customer experience. Your team may be concentrating on increasing cart conversions. 

At the same time, another is focusing on growing registrations this quarter. While you can move toward two goals simultaneously without understanding where the targeted messages are landing in the customer journey, it can be hard to land meaningful messages at the right time. 

When marketing, product, and data teams operate with limited information, it leads to miscommunication and missed opportunities to work together to achieve your goals. 

Inefficient Operations:

Miscommunication can then lead to duplicated efforts and wasted resources. Imagine the marketing team creating content the product team is already developing, or vice versa. 

This redundancy slows down processes and increases marketing costs. In a world where resourcing and budgets are closely monitored, the last thing you want to do is double up on something already handled and potentially sent out to the customer. Efforts become muddied, and it can prove challenging to attribute success or failure. 

Difficulty Measuring Success:

When two or more teams are running campaigns from two or more platforms with two or more sources of truth, measuring marketing efforts’ impact becomes as complex as finding a needle in a haystack. 

Without a unified view of the customer journey, it’s challenging to determine which marketing activities are driving the most conversions. 

It can also be hard to tell if you are sending the right message at the right time and on the right channel, but moving to one customer engagement platform can help solve this. 

 

The Cost of Disconnection: An Empty Piggy Bank

The consequences of siloed operations go beyond customer dissatisfaction and team breakdowns and quickly affect your bottom line.

First of all, dissatisfied customers who experience a disjointed brand journey are more likely to defect to competitors. Imagine a customer frustrated by irrelevant emails and inconsistent brand communications. They’re less likely to remain loyal to your brand and far less likely to be a brand advocate. 

Second, disjointed experiences that lack personalization cause customers to have a negative brand experience. According to Statista, 72% of consumers say they have received irrelevant marketing messages from companies they have done business with.

If customers feel like they are interacting with multiple companies and not one cohesive brand, they will consider shopping elsewhere. This lack of brand consistency weakens brand recognition and makes it difficult to build customer loyalty.

Finally, fragmented data creates a fractured view of customer behavior and campaign performance.

Making decisions based on incomplete information or inaccurate data goes beyond marketing; it could also lead product development, sales, and engineering teams in the wrong direction. This hinders innovation and limits your ability to develop creative solutions. 

 

So, Are Your Marketing Communications Suffering from a Silo Problem?

Here are some red flags that might indicate your team is ready for a unified ecosystem: 

• Disconnected Teams, Disconnected Messages: Do different departments handle your social media, email marketing, and website content? Siloed teams often create isolated messages, leading to brand voice, tone, and messaging inconsistencies.
• Hinder Visibility Due to Digital Silos: Did you recently launch a new app or online store? If you can’t track whether customers have interacted with both your website and app, it’s a sign of siloed data. This lack of visibility makes it difficult to understand the complete customer journey.
• Missing Channels, Missing Opportunities: Are you neglecting email marketing or social media altogether? Every channel offers a unique way to connect with customers. Silos can lead to missed opportunities to reach your audience on their preferred platforms.
• A Tower of Babel of Platforms: Do you use a different platform to manage each communication channel? A jumble of platforms makes it difficult to maintain consistency and creates challenges in scheduling and content creation.
• Fragmented Reporting, Fragmented View: Do you struggle to gather data and reporting from multiple channels to understand your customer journey? Siloed data makes getting a holistic view of campaign performance and customer behavior difficult.
• Brick-and-Mortar Blindspot: Do you lack data on customer interactions at physical stores or events? A siloed marketing strategy often neglects offline touchpoints, creating a disconnect between the online and offline customer experience.
• One-Way Street Communication: Is two-way communication with your customers limited or non-existent? Silos can prevent you from effectively responding to customer inquiries and feedback, hindering relationship building.

The Value of Breaking Down Communication Silos

As we’ve discussed, there are many negative impacts caused by organizational siloes. However, by investing in breaking down those silos, you will reap the benefits of having a more tightly connected customer journey. 

With regard to your messaging strategy, you are now creating a unified experience, a seamless continuation of the story you began on social media. You are building website messaging that complements the ad, welcoming the customer with a familiar voice, not a stranger from a different world. 

Unsiloing your messaging isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about creating a customer experience that feels and looks magical. It’s about empowering your teams to work together, see the bigger picture, and craft a seamless journey for every customer, like winding your way down the yellow brick road toward home. 

It’s about creating loyal brand advocates, happy customers, who want to share your brand with others. It’s about leveraging data to understand your audience and deliver timely messages that resonate deeply. It’s about fostering innovation and creativity and building a solid brand that stands out in a crowded marketplace. 

By unsiloing your messaging, you’re creating a more effective marketing strategy, a loyal customer base, and a thriving business. So, ditch the fragmented and disoriented experience of waking up in Oz and embrace the power of unified communication. 

In Part 2, we’ll discuss how to do just that.

 

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Part 2 – A Practical Guide to Building a Connected Customer Journey Framework

As you know, in part one of this series, we discussed how communication silos can hurt your business. But we haven’t looked at exactly how your organization can build a connected customer journey that whisks your customers away on the proverbial yellow brick road of delightful interactions, leading them to the Emerald City of brand loyalty!

In part 2 of this series, we’ll guide you from the blues of siloed messaging to the bliss of multichannel magic by exploring the core principles for building a connected customer journey framework. 

We’ll delve into the specific focus areas for each phase of messaging maturity and practical implementation tips to get your team collaborating to create the connected customer experience you have always dreamed of, starting with 4 fundamental principles for success.

 

Framework Foundation: 4 Fundamental Pillars To Keep Top Of Mind

• Customer-centricity: This is the golden rule, and it pays off. Every aspect of your framework should be centered around understanding and listening to your customer’s needs, wants, and pain points at each touchpoint they encounter with your brand. This involves bringing everyone (marketing, product, data, and technology) together to recognize the customers as a whole, not segments owned by individual departments.

• Unifying your customer data: Remove barriers to collaborative data by creating a center that houses customer data from many sources. Silos often occur because departments have access to different data sets and a central hub unites all teams around a single source of truth. The unified view allows you to deliver targeted, personalized communications that resonate deeply with your audience. 

• Data-driven decisions: Embrace data-driven decision-making by removing the conflicting messages created by departmental biases. Use analytics to track performance, measure success, and continuously refine your approach. In order for data to be your guide, and to lead you toward a customer journey that you know so intimately that you can deliver exceptional results, you must be able to rely on data gathered from all touch points. Strive to eliminate departmental guesswork and ensure consistent communication across the entire journey. 

• Orchestrating Omnichannel Magic: Run, don’t walk toward a cohesive omnichannel approach. Silos often confine communication to specific channels. For example, marketing might focus on email while technology owns push notifications. This framework thrives on integrating all channels into a seamless experience. It requires collaboration across departments to create a seamless experience that follows your customers across their journey and allows you in on real-time insights. 

 

Framework: From Siloed Communications to Connected Journeys

Now that we have a solid foundation let’s delve into the essential elements of a robust, connected customer experience framework: 

1. Mapping the Customer Journey

The first step involves creating a comprehensive journey map. This map visually depicts a customer’s complete path when interacting with your brand across all digital and physical touchpoints. 

In order to fight the fractured approach, get organized around which types of information each department will share in a group setting. For example, allow marketing to expose open rates and campaign results while product reports on product pathway behaviors. 

Pro tip: As part of your customer journey mapping process, use an online whiteboard tool to pull in screenshots or Figma files to label each step accurately. Consider it your blueprint for understanding how your customers might move through the buying process. By working together, departments can identify areas where there is a communication gap and brainstorm how to correct it.  

Questions to consider as you build: 

• What are all the possible touchpoints customers might encounter at each stage? 
• How do customers typically move between these touchpoints? 

 

2. Defining the moments: Zooming in on critical interactions

Each step on the journey map has specific moments where your customer interacts with your brand. These critical moments might include browsing subscription plans, joining the restaurant waitlist, abandoning a cart (let’s hope not!), finding the location of a store, seeking customer support, or leaving a review. 

By zooming into specific touchpoints with other departments, you will spot where communication silos are occurring more easily. You will gain a better understanding of your customer’s thought processes, concerns, and motivations at each touchpoint and be able to develop a unified script for outreach. 

Questions to consider while you dig in: 

• What information are they looking for at each stage? 
• What emotions might they be experiencing (e.g., confused, excited, frustrated)?
• What types of messages would the user be most open to receiving at this moment? 

For example, an online pet store might consider the “browsing product categories” touchpoint on the customer journey map and identify moments like using filters to narrow down food options based on pet type, clicking on specific product description pages to look at ingredients, or comparing prices between different brands and products. 

 

3. Identifying overlaps and closing gaps

This step encourages teams to look for gaps in where touchpoints overlap and how customers move between channels. These inconsistencies in customer experience and communication gaps might look like conflicting messaging across different channels, lack of personalization after a customer makes a purchase, or multiple conflicting discount offers to complete an abandoned cart. Close these gaps by staying true to your thorough examination of messages across all channels. 

Questions to consider in your hunt for overlaps and gaps: 

• Are there any inconsistencies in messaging or branding across different interactions?
• Do certain stages of the journey lack relevant content or personalization and where can we grow in this area? 
• Are there any gaps in the customer journey where additional support, education, or information could be helpful? 

 

4. Data Measuring & Analytics

Don’t drift off here; this part is pivotal to the success of the following steps. To truly understand your customer journey, you must analyze their behaviors at each critical step. Implement proper measurement mechanisms like website and app analytics tools, marketing automation platform data, customer engagement platform data, and customer service interaction logs. 

This task is often left to the engineering team to navigate but is most successful when multiple teams influence the data blueprint and measurement plan. Because each department brings a unique lens to the way they view and use the data, analysis is most useful when shared. 

Insights will inform your personalized marketing strategies and guide you toward optimizing the customer journey for an engaging experience. 

Pro tip: If you don’t know where to start with your data taxonomy, start small and scale. Look at your customer journey map from steps 1 and 2 and create events and properties accordingly. If you can understand the critical steps, you can color your taxonomy with additional context as you advance it.

Questions to consider as you build your taxonomy: 

• Do you have the ability to understand each critical moment in the customer journey? 
• Are you using analytics tools to identify trends and patterns in customer behavior? 
• Can you leverage customer data to personalize the journey for different segments? 
• What steps need to be taken to say yes to the questions above? 

 

5. Segmentation and targeting based on user behaviors

We all know that the days of one-size-fits-all marketing are gone. The good news is the days of targeted communication are here. 

Departments can deliver personalized customer experiences that break through the noise and foster customer loyalty by developing communication plans together. Successful segmentation involves grouping customers with similar characteristics or behavior patterns. 

We can take this further with a data-driven approach by focusing on user behaviors, such as time spent on specific product categories, search terms used, average order value, and following specific brands or products. 

By concentrating on using behavioral data, you can expect highly targeted communications to increase engagement and improve conversion rates. 

Questions to consider: 

• What user behaviors are we currently keeping track of? Where are the gaps? 
• How can I segment our customer base based on relevant user behaviors like frequent buyers? 
• What marketing channels and messages would suit the segment that I am trying to reach? Does it match the call to action? 
• How do I need to adjust for this targeted audience’s customer journey? 

For example, an online clothing store may want to segment users based on browsing history. They could create a segment on “dress enthusiasts” who frequently view dresses and have purchased dresses in the past. 

This segment could be targeted with email marketing campaigns showcasing new summer dress arrivals, personalized recommendations for shoes that accompany the dresses, and exclusive offers and discounts. When the barriers come down, this campaign could extend to customers that walk into the store when sales pitches the same products to customers. 

 

6. Personalization with Content Creation and Automation

Personalization takes segmentation one step further by tailoring content and experiences to individual users. 

It is the difference between walking into your favorite coffee shop and the barista greeting you by name and walking into your favorite coffee shop and Brian, the barista, greeting you with, “Hi Heather, would you like your usual iced oat milk latte and a chocolate croissant today?” 

Imagine if Brian knew you would want it hot in the winter and iced in the summer. 

See the magic there? 

This involves leveraging customer data to create relevant, engaging content that speaks directly to their needs and interests. 

Personalization can take many forms and evolve over time. The goal is a hyper-personalized strategy that feels natural to the user. And this framework is most impactful when teams are encouraged to coordinate content that speaks directly to the customer needs, in that moment. 

Marketing can create personalized emails based on browsing history, suggesting complementary products or offering free trial memberships. Product teams can develop product descriptions that highlight features relevant to specific customer segments. 

Unification ensures a consistent, hyper-personalized experience across all brand touchpoints. When working together product recommendations, dynamic website content, retargeting ads, and marketing automations can be designed for each user, not large segments. 

 

7. Invest in Real-Time Interaction Capabilities

To truly break down messaging silos and personalize experiences, invest in online and offline real-time interaction capabilities. Real-time interactions can be device-triggered, transactional alerts, or segment evaluation based and power immediate and targeted communication. 

Real-time device triggers allow marketing to send a personalized push notification upon reaching a specific milestone and allow product teams to leverage in-app to offer personalized how-to recommendations. 

Additionally, real-time transactional alerts streamline communication across all channels by enabling teams to send timely messages when a package arrives or a one-time password for secure transactions. 

Finally, real-time segment evaluation allows teams to work together to define customer segments based on real-time behaviors to launch personalized campaigns across email, push, WhatsApp, SMS, or in-app when it matters most. 

Because communication silos often create a static customer journey, joining forces with real-time interaction capabilities results in less missed opportunities. Real time interactions empower a dynamic approach to a more engaging experience which motivates the user to complete the intended action. 

 

8. Experimentation for refinement and continuous improvement

Building a connected customer journey is an ever-evolving road, as needs, wants, trends and pain points will change. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different strategies, messages, and channels. 

You can select A/B, multivariate, or customer feedback surveys to execute experiments and gather data. Ways to make this a more collaborative practice is to share experimentation requests, tickets, and analysis cross departmentally. 

Build a feedback loop that allows departments to identify the best messaging across all channels, refine their communication strategies based on real-time data, and constantly evolve with customer needs. 

Experimentation will benefit your ability to make data-driven decisions and optimize your customer experience by allowing you to refine your framework to deliver the best possible experience continuously. 

Questions to consider: 

• What aspects of your framework do you experiment with today? And where would you like to take your experimentation practice? 
• How will you track the results of your experiments and measure success? 
• How can you use customer feedback to refine your approach and identify areas for improvement? 
• How can experimentation translate to product development, marketing strategy, and sales? 

Implementation Tips and Tricks: Breaking Down Silos in Action

Build Collaboration

Foster teamwork across product, marketing, data science, and customer service departments. This collaboration dismantles silos and ensures everyone contributes to creating a connected customer experience. 

Regular meetings, shared reporting, workshops, and brainstorming sessions can help deteriorate departmental barriers and encourage open communication. 

Embrace Data & Experimentation

Leverage analytics to track performance, test different approaches, and refine your strategy for continuous improvement. Share metrics and conduct joint experiments to empower teams to see the impact of refining their communication tactics. 

Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure the effectiveness of implementation of the above framework. By working together on experiments and analyzing results, the teams can strive to identify areas for improvement for maximum impact. 

Invest in Real-Time Technology

Utilize a Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) with real time data to manage multi-channel campaigns, personalize messages, and automate workflows across departments. 

One platform makes it much more straightforward for teams to manage customer data, execute campaigns, and tracking results. Real time data allows you to react to customer behaviors as they are happening, and unlocks the ability to truly meet customer needs with relevant and timely interactions. 

With the right technology, you can empower teams to collaborate more effectively and create a more connected experience for your customers.

Prevent Silo Recurrence

When barriers are removed, practices to prevent them from re-emerging are key to success long-term. Perform regular performance reviews that include cross-departmental communication and effectiveness metrics. 

Invest in training that equips teams with collaborative practices and reward teamwork to incentivize continued cooperation. Reevaluate your anti-silo approach and adopt new tools to ensure your strategy adapts with your evolving business and customer needs. 

This continuous effort fosters a synergistic environment and prevents silos from becoming a roadblock again. 

 

Moving from Communication Silos to a Connect Customer Experience: Conclusion

Moving from siloed messaging to a connected customer experience isn’t an overnight achievement. However, this framework provides a roadmap for gradual progression, equipping you with the tools and strategies to unlock the power and value of connected communication. 

By prioritizing customer needs and leveraging data-driven insights, you’ll cultivate a loyal customer base, achieve business goals, and achieve product/market fit efficiency. 

Remember, the journey to a seamless customer experience is an ongoing process. Embrace experimentation, gather feedback, and continuously refine your approach to create a journey that delights your customers at every touchpoint, transforming them into raving fans who click their heels and sing, “There’s no place like [your brand]!” 

 

Part 3 – Applying the Framework: 3 Real-World Examples Across Industries

In part 1 and 2 of this series, we discussed how to spot data and communication silos within your analytics, processes, and teams. We then outlined a framework for identifying, treating, and preventing silos that hinder growth, stifle innovation, and erode customer satisfaction and engagement with your brand.

Now, in part 3, we delve deeper into the real-world examples across retail, media, and BSFI sectors to illustrate how organizations can successfully break down these barriers and create a more unified, customer-centric approach to engagement. 

 

Retail: From Silos to Synergy

Retailers often operate in silos due to having multiple outlets to shop both physically and digitally. Separate systems and teams will manage the online and offline operations, posing a challenge to meet each individual with timely and relevant content.

Inconsistent customer experiences cause decreased profitability, leading to missed opportunities.

Let’s walk through how to spot common communication silos in the retail industry and how to use the framework to adjust your strategy and meet the expectations of your customers with an example, ShoeCollective, an online and in-store women’s apparel brand.   

Retail: Identifying/ Spotting Silos

• Data discrepancies: Many retailers maintain separate customer databases for online and in-store purchases, leading to inaccurate purchase histories and irrelevant product recommendations. For example, customers who frequently buy jeans in-store might not receive relevant online promotions or personalized styling advice. Retailers with multiple brands may struggle to understand how the same person is shopping all of their brands and, therefore, miss out on valuable contextual information to encourage brand loyalty and cross-selling. 
• Channel-specific KPIs: Separating KPIs for in-store and online behaviors can lead to underinvestment in digital marketing and e-commerce initiatives, impacting overall business growth. Retailers commonly focus on in-store sales figures, neglecting the contribution of online channels to overall revenue. Adjusting KPIs and integrating data systems to include holistic measurements helps maintain attribution metric integrity. 
• One-off marketing campaigns: A common communication mishap can be missed or conflicting messages. Marketing campaigns that don’t account for prior shopping behaviors could result in redundant efforts and messages that seem out of place. For instance, imagine a fashion retailer running separate email and in-store promotions without considering how they can complement each other. 

Retail Silo Example:

Let’s walk through a specific example of how ShoeCollective’s siloed operations impacted their customers. Imagine a customer, Shelly, who frequently purchases shoes from ShoeCollective.

Shelly is a loyal customer who appreciates the quality and variety of their shoe offerings. Shelly recently received an email promotion for a new collection of shoes that is a collaboration between ShoeCollective and a favorite celebrity.

Excited about the collection, she visits her local store and discovers the promotion is not available in-store and they are sold out of the collection.

A different group of users belonging to a different loyalty program tier existed and were notified of the shoe collection days earlier. Shelly is frustrated about missing out on benefits and her new shoes. 

Applying the Framework in Retail

ShoeCollective can implement several strategies in the framework to address these challenges and create a more unified customer experience. 

Starting with mapping the customer journey and identifying key touchpoints, gaps, and overlaps. A properly configured B2C journey map template of this example would have let us know that Shelly opened the email, browsed the new collection, and selected a size 7.5. She then looked up store locations in her area.

From the customer profile, we may understand that Shelly is also a loyalty member and buys a new pair of shoes every 3 months.

In-store and location data could have given more context to Shelly’s experience. By identifying a gap in location data and loyalty programs, ShoeCollective can start to consolidate data streams for more effective marketing campaigns.

From there, we could apply the framework to personalize and automate the messaging practices, in real-time, to offer Shelly free shipping, knowing that Shelly’s in-store experience did not result in a purchase.

Furthermore, experimenting to see if free shipping is truly what customers want in that scenario will help better understand and inform marketing strategies. 

A few companies that are doing this well are Sephora, Target, and Amazon. All three companies allow the customer to browse and purchase online while understanding your behavior in their physical store environment. The communication between the brand and the customer is seamless and fluid. 

By applying the framework to understand your customers best, retail marketers can synchronize promotions, simplify loyalty programs, and personalized recommendations, resulting in improved sales and customer satisfaction across various channels.

 

Media: Bridging the Gap

Media companies face unique challenges due to rapid technological advancements and changing consumer preferences. Adapting to these shifts is crucial for staying competitive.

Media: Spotting/Identifying Silos

• Data fragmentation: This can lead to ineffective segmentation and content that becomes redundant or not accurately personalized. For instance, missed opportunities to target readers who consume content across multiple platforms with tailored content and advertising can arise. Additionally, making assumptions about behaviors that may or may not have been truthful can hinder personalization efforts. 
• Inconsistent brand messaging: Employing a formal, authoritative tone for print editions but adopting a more casual and conversational style for social media channels can confuse readers and dilute the brand identity. This inconsistency can erode trust and credibility, leaving consumers unsure what to expect from the brand.  
• Siloed content creation: Print, online, and broadcast teams, working independently, can result in redundant efforts and inconsistent quality across different platforms. It is common for siloed content creation to limit personalization strategies, as well, and cause emails and recommended reads to become generic. 

Media Silo Example:

A past client we will call,” NewsToday,” faced data fragmentation challenges as they used Google Analytics for their websites, Adobe Analytics for their mobile app, and Facebook Insights for their social media channels, leading to an incomplete understanding of audience behavior.

They struggled to identify which platforms were most effective for reaching different segments. NewsToday found it difficult to identify the indicators that a client was falling out of regular content consumption and had a likelihood to churn. So how can NewsToday use the framework to deliver more consistent and engaging content tailored to each customer? 

Applying the Framework in Media

To effectively address these challenges, NewsToday should begin by mapping its customer journey to gain a deeper understanding of user behavior. By identifying critical touchpoints, such as email opens, website visits, and app usage, NewsToday can analyze metrics like average session duration and content consumption.

After consolidating data sources, NewsToday can leverage predictive analytics to segment users based on their likelihood of completing specific actions, such as subscribing to a newsletter or sharing content.

This segmentation allows for more targeted and effective personalization efforts. Instead of relying on generic recommendations like “Top 10” or “Most Relevant,” NewsToday can tailor content based on each user’s unique preferences and consumption patterns.

A few companies that are on the road to mastering personalization are Netflix, Spotify, and The New York Times. All three express very clear personalized recommendations that tie to the customer journey. Communications allow you to move cohesively through their web and mobile platforms. 

Next, we move to how to apply the framework to common BSFI communication silo challenges to encourage to brand loyalty and advocacy. 

 

BSFI: Building Customer-Centric Relationships

The BFSI industry faces unique challenges due to complex products, regulations, and intertwined customer relationships.

These factors make it critical for brands in this space to understand customer behavior and how to leverage real-time customer data to deliver the right message at the right time, on the right channel.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. But, spotting the common silos and knowing how to use the framework to solve them is an essential step forward toward a resolution. 

BSFI: Spotting/Identifying Silos

• Data inconsistencies: Financial organizations often maintain separate customer databases for retail and commercial banking, leading to inaccurate customer profiles and limited cross-selling opportunities. Data inconsistency can come into play when the lack of data collection begins to showcase gaps in messaging and treatment of the customer. 
• Product-centric focus: Without a customer-centric focus, companies will prioritize selling individual products over building long-term customer relationships. This can lead to customers feeling bombarded and seeking alternative options. 
• Channel-specific customer journeys: The same bank might offer different onboarding experiences for website, app, and in-branch customers, leading to inconsistencies and customer frustration. Onboarding experiences and any customer journey should be complementary to one another. These fragmented experiences bring awareness to the lack of coordination and erode trust and loyalty. More than ever, customers expect a seamless and consistent journey regardless of their chosen channel. 

Financial Services Example:

Ethan recently joined a trading app, Bullish. He has made his way through onboarding, and verification, and made his first six transactions, and found their interface to be user-friendly.

Ethan recently received a push notification that encouraged him to make his first trade and an email promotion urging him to try out the new robo-adviser service for a discount. However, Ethan is already using the built-in robo-advisor and has made several trades.

The push notification and promotional email was irrelevant to Ethan’s needs and created unnecessary confusion. 

Applying the Framework in BFSI

To achieve a more unified and customer-centric approach, BFSI institutions can invest in building a real-time customer profile, map their customer journey, and foster cross-functional collaboration, including Bullish. 

The road to better customer experience starts with understanding your customer. I feel strongly that this is a necessary step because it illuminates so many overlaps and gaps and collaboratively aligns your team.

Bullish is no exception to the rule. By mapping the customer journey, we discovered key points in the process including that account and funding verification took an hour or more, getting users back in to make their first trade was critical, and that the more research that was done in-app, the higher likelihood of users continuing to make investments over time.

Using these insights, Bullish, was able to guide users toward achieving their goals faster. 

Next, by identifying the overlaps in touchpoints and implementing a proper data blueprint, Bullish was then able to segment based on real-time user behavior. Bullish was able to personalize messaging based on the user’s actions and stopped dropping users into a messaging flow just because they had created an account. This approach reduced churn during the verification process and created a much more seamless experience for users like Ethan.

Companies like Capital One, TD Bank, and Robinhood have a customer-centric approach. They are known for their digital innovation and focus on convenience for their customers. Orchestrating consistent experiences across multiple platforms is key to building trust and all three have placed a high focus on achieving trust and loyalty. 

 

Applying the Framework By Industry: Concluding Thoughts

The examples provided demonstrate the significant impact that communication silos can have on businesses across the retail, media, and BSFI industries.

By following the framework outlined in this series, organizations can effectively identify, prevent, and treat silos, leading to improved customer experiences, increased revenue, and enhanced operational efficiency.

It is essential to continuously monitor for emerging silos and adapt strategies accordingly to maintain a customer-centric focus.

By embracing a holistic and collaborative approach, businesses can unlock the full potential of their data, talent, and resources, ultimately finding their yellow brick road to business growth and success, just like Dorothy in Oz.