8 Omnichannel Challenges and How Liferay DXP Addresses Them

Customers are no longer satisfied with the bare minimum. They expect 24/7 customer service, seamless checkouts, speed, convenience, and more across all touchpoints, including emails, apps, text messages, and offline channels. An omnichannel journey is advantageous for customers and companies alike. How can companies develop an omnichannel strategy that helps them craft engaging omnichannel experiences? Liferay DXP is the answer.

75% of customers prefer personalization to facilitate smooth navigation online and offline. Don’t think that customers expect personalization and high standards only from big players like Amazon. Even smaller companies must elevate their game to sustain competition and stay relevant. 54% of customers choose messaging apps to contact businesses, 74% use social media to purchase products, and 73% use multiple channels.

Customers can choose any channel to contact a business and make purchases. They can pick and choose, but businesses can’t do the same. Therefore, companies must do everything to gain customer trust and ensure a fulfilling customer experience. How does Liferay DXP help companies achieve this objective? What omnichannel challenges do companies face? How does Liferay address these challenges? This blog will discuss these aspects and more. Keep reading.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Brief Liferay DXP Overview
• 8 Omnichannel Challenges
• How does Liferay DXP Address These Challenges?
• Final Thoughts

Brief Liferay DXP Overview

Every project is different and has unique challenges and requirements. Coders must write the core code for the project’s features, functionalities, and other components. Imagine developers having to do this for each project. It can become excruciating. With pre-built components and portlets, reusable codes and libraries, and development integration capabilities, Liferay DXP reduces the need for repeated coding and fosters greater productivity and innovation.

8 Omnichannel Challenges

Below are the omnichannel challenges that companies face.

1. Inconsistent Customer Experience

Customers interact with their favorite brands through mobile apps, websites, social media, and other channels. Companies can’t choose the channel customers prefer to contact them. Hence, they must ensure a smooth and uniform experience across all channels, which is an enormous challenge for them.

Siloed Departments and Systems

• Marketing, sales, finance, and other departments operate in silos with different data and systems.
• Scattered customer data across various platforms, resulting in incomplete custom profiles.
• Inconsistent brand messaging resulting in confused/misguided customer experiences.

Channel-Specific Experiences

• The tone, language, and design can vary across platforms, leading to disconnected customer experiences.
• Certain features available on a specific platform may be unavailable in others.
• Customers who switch between channels may have to repeat information, resulting in frustration and negative customer experience.

Not Customer-Focused

• Many companies focus on profits and internal processes, unthinkingly following competitors while ignoring customer needs. This results in lousy customer experiences.
• Ineffective use of customer data and data analytics for personalization and optimal customer experiences.

Technological Hurdles

• Legacy systems may hinder data integration.
• Maintaining consistency across multiple channels can be tricky.

2. Data Silos

Data stored in multiple systems and platforms result in siloed or fragmented data. Examples of these platforms include the following:

• CRM Systems – Sales and customer interactions.
• E-Commerce Platforms – Online purchases and browsing behavior.
• Marketing Automation Tools – Email marketing campaigns and social media interactions.
• Customer Support Systems – Inquiries, grievances, and complaints on emails, websites, and feedback forms.

The lack of a consolidated view of data across various platforms results in the following problems:

Inconsistent Experiences

• The absence of a 360-degree view of customer data prevents companies from providing personalized experiences.
• Fragmented or siloed data can hamper targeted marketing efforts, wasting resources and missed opportunities.
• Customer service executives who fail to answer queries or solve problems lead to customer dissatisfaction.
• Customer information lying in various sources results in siloed data, which is unconducive to informed decision-making.

3. Complex Integrations

Connecting multiple touchpoints like websites, apps, social media platforms can be complicated. The complexities related to these integrations are as follows:

Time-Consuming

• Different systems have separate structures, data formats, and protocols. Developers must understand the systems, translate data and ensure efficient communication between them.
• Developers need to build custom integrations to connect multiple systems which takes considerable time and effort.
• Most importantly, ensuring data accuracy, optimal performance and minimal errors across multiple channels require extensive testing and optimization.

Error-Prone

• Different data formats, naming conventions, and structures may result in data consistencies and errors.
• Technical glitches and system failures can ruin the omnichannel experience.
• Manual data entries and reconciliation processes are prone to errors.
• Ingerations involving multiple systems may result in several errors and conflicts.

Other Challenges

• Ensuring consistent data definitions and formats across different systems is a huge challenge.
• Synchronizing real-time data across multiple channels can also be a headache.
• Companies must implement robust security measures while integrating multiple systems to protect sensitive customer data.
• Integrating multiple channels with vast volumes of customer data can be tough, especially when the business grows over time.
• Implementing and maintaining the integrations may require upfront financial investments.

4. Personalization Challenges

Besides breaking data silos, ensuring uniform data quality and processing real-time data, companies face other challenges.

Customer Management

• Identifying customers interacting through multiple channels and platforms is hard.
• Crafting personalized experiences while ensuring privacy and security can be daunting.

Deciphering Customer Behavior

• Customers interacting through various channels at overlapping stages and unknown starting points make it hard for companies to understand their preferences.
• Understanding and anticipating customer needs requires robust analytics, AI and ML tools.

Organizational Hurdles

• Aligning marketing, sales, customer service and IT processings is necessary for robust personalization.
• Fostering a customer-centric culture while prioritizing personalization is tricky for most companies.

Technological Obstacles

• Ensuring personalized experiences for customers requires the use of advanced technologies and infrastructure which may be tough for small businesses.
• Implementing and maintaining complex AI models can be expensive.

5. Mobile Optimization

Customers may use a variety of devices like tablets and smartphones to interact with a company. Companies must ensure that their website/app works optimally on these devices, especially smartphones.

• Smartphones come in various sizes. A company’s website/app must adapt to different screen sizes, aspect ratios, and pixel densities without compromising user experience.
• Different operating systems have varying UI, hardware capabilities, and performance. Optimizing platforms for each operating system while considering user behavior and device limitations.
• Content must load seamlessly and smoothly on devices with 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G connections.
• Mobile users consume content differently from desktop users with a strong emphasis on instant gratification, quick content consumption, and touch-based interactions. This compels companies to optimize content and navigation for mobile devices.
• GPS, camera, accelerometer and other features can elevate mobile experiences. Companies must leverage these features while ensuring compatibility with various devices.
• Smartphones consume significant processing power and battery to function effectively. It is necessary to optimize images, minimize code and load times to deliver smooth experiences.

6. Performance Tracking and Analysis

Measuring success of business activities across multiple platforms can be challenging. There are several reasons. Some of them are as follows.

• Different metrics for each channel, data formats and varying data quality.
• Customer journeys vary across different platforms and it becomes difficult to pinpoint the touchpoints that encourage customers to make purchase decisions.
• The same campaign can deliver different results on multiple channels.
• Integrating data from various channels is time consuming and complex while increasing security risks.
• Some data analytics tools lack powerful multi-channel tracking and analysis features.
• Data compliance laws can greatly impair data sharing and analysis.
• Besides trained personnel, companies require substantial money and time to gather, analyze and interpret data.
• New platforms require innovative measurement strategies while ever-changing social media algorithms further complicate the situation.
• Suppose a prominent player in the industry alters his strategy by concentrating on a particular channel, introducing a new channel or by changing his messaging style. Such instances can help rival companies improve their channel effectiveness.

7. ​​​Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is a complex process wherein companies identify, visualize and analyze the steps that customers undertake while interacting with them. These steps can include identifying the touchpoints, visualizing customer journeys and gauging their emotions. Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool to transform customer experiences but they have their share of challenges.

Complex Customer Journeys

• Tracking customer journeys becomes super challenging because they use multiple channels.
• With the rise in the number of touchpoints, tracking and identifying them becomes even more difficult.
• Customer mapping becomes further complicated as customers follow non-linear journeys.
• Privacy and data regulations, cookie restrictions and ad blockers can make it hard to track online behavior.

Data Collection and Analysis

• Gathering customer interaction data is challenging, especially for offline channels.
• It is crucial to ensure the availability of clean and uniform data for informed decision-making.
• Transforming raw data into actionable insights requires powerful analytical tools and trained personnel.

Customer Emotions Analysis

• Customer emotions are subjective and every individual is different. This makes it difficult for companies to understand human emotions.
• Biased customer emotions can be misleading. Uncovering the reasons for their biases is harder.
• Customer tastes and preferences change constantly. Companies have to adjust their strategies in order to cater to these evolving expectations.

Organizational Challenges

• Effective customer journey mapping requires robust inter-departmental coordination which can be tricky.
• Customer mapping requires extensive resources and substantial time.
• Companies need to zero in on the journeys they want to map and prioritize.

Technological Hurdles

• The tools required for mapping and analysis can be expensive. Also, some tools have limited features.
• Integrating data from several sources, especially legacy systems can be complex and time consuming.
• Compliance with data protection laws can hamper data gathering and analysis efforts.

Resource Crunch

• Customer journey tracking and analysis is a complex process which requires technical knowledge and experience.
• Customer journey analysis being a time-intensive activity, allocating time and resources can be challenging for companies.
• Specialized tools and software required for multi-channel performance analysis are expensive.

8. Channel Proliferation

The sharp rise in the number of communication channels has created opportunities for complaint but it also brings along several challenges. The challenges are as follows:

Resource Intensive
Managing each channel requires dedicated resources like customer support, content creation strategies and others. Creating specialized teams for each task requires companies to hire more people while incurring higher costs.

Complexity
Every channel is different with unique features, audiences and engagement strategies. Ensuring consistent messaging and personalized experiences across multiple channels can be challenging.

Customer Expectations
Customer expectations have risen. They want seamless experiences across multiple channels. Companies that can’t ensure the above lose their customers and can’t sustain competition.

Excessive Data
Every business channel generates vast volumes of data. Gathering, analyzing and using these insights can be difficult for companies.

Technology Challenges
Integrating multiple channels and platforms requires robust technical expertise for API integration, data integration, real-time synchronization, system compatibility and more. Activities like these can require continuous attention from IT teams.

How does Liferay DXP Address These Challenges?

Liferay DXP addresses the above challenges by facilitating the following:

Unified Platform
Liferay DXP provides a centralized platform for managing customer data and interactions across multiple touchpoints. This ensures that all employees access the same data to perform tasks, resulting in greater clarity and efficiency.

Management
With robust tools for gathering, storing, and analyzing data, Liferay DXP provides actionable data for informed decision-making.

Integration Capabilities

Pre-built connectors and APIs in Liferay DXP ensure seamless integration with existing systems and platforms.

Personalization Engine

Liferay DXP has advanced features that enable companies to create customized experiences based on customer behavior and preferences.

Responsive Design

With built-in support for responsive design, businesses can optimize experiences across multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, desktops, and more.

Analytics and Reporting

Liferay DXP has extensive analytics and reporting capabilities, including custom reports, user-tracking, side metrics, and built-in dashboards to help companies monitor results and identify areas for improvement.

Customer Journey Mapping

Liferay DXP does not have built-in customer journey mapping tools. Still, companies can use its integration and analytics capabilities to personalize and manage customer journeys.

Content Management

Thanks to a built-in CMS system, companies can create, organize, and publicize content across multiple channels, improving their online visibility.

Final Thoughts

Ensuring consistent and exceptional omnichannel experiences is no longer an option for companies. Whether it’s a small business or a large corporation, companies must adopt an omnichannel approach to compete with the big players in the market. Not only will an omnichannel approach help them gain valuable data from multiple sources, but it will also eventually increase sales and revenue.

Liferay DXP is a robust tool that provides companies with the tools they need to create omnichannel strategies, implement them, and measure their success. However, implementing Liferay DXP may not be easy for all companies. It requires experienced technical personnel and a structured approach. Moreover, there are other challenges involved, like extensive customization requirements, legacy system integration, change management, and significant upfront investments. That being said, companies need not despair.

Tridhya Tech is a reputed Liferay consulting company that has been in business for over a decade. With a robust presence in over eight countries, we have over 500 satisfied clients. Stay ahead of the competition and take innovation to the next level with our guidance. Call us at +1 386 597 1231 or email us at [email protected].