Can CIOs Optimize Customer Experiences with Omnichannel Agreements?

Today, your customers likely engage with your organization in an entirely new way. They’re researching products, making purchases and interacting with customer support at all times of day, via any channel (including social media reviews and TikTok), from any location and on whatever device they want. Satisfying the technological demands of these always-on consumers is a tall task for any CIO, but the organizations that do it right have a huge advantage in attracting new customers and increasing the loyalty of existing ones.

One way to start meeting those customer demands is to build an omnichannel agreement experience: a unified way for customers to complete forms, agree to T&C’s and sign sales contracts across any channel, platform or device. It’s about providing a connected, secure experience that’s available for your customers at any time, whether they prefer mobile, web, in-person, etc.

While the entire company (and your customers!) will benefit from an omnichannel experience, the responsibility of building and maintaining the infrastructure belongs to the CIO. CIO Magazine says customer experience is the new IT imperative since no other line of business can create the robust digital environment that leads to these stellar interactions. CIOs everywhere are realizing that omnichannel is an opportunity to expand their scope and create new value by owning this transformation.

Why agreements matter to your omnichannel experience

A growing number of industries require multiple forms or agreements throughout a customer’s lifecycle —automotive, utility, telecommunications, hospitality, retail, tax & accounting, legal firms, etc. These documents keep a record of the relationship between a brand and a consumer, including requests for information, trial documentation, sales contracts, delivery confirmation, renewal initiation, etc. For most customers, the experience they have across these interactions isn’t just part of the product they buy, it is the product.

Today’s buyers remember their best interactions with various organizations and hold other brands to those standards. Salesforce’s State of the Connected Consumer report finds that 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. In the hypercompetitive digital space, any customer or prospect might be one clunky interaction away from abandoning a brand.

How are omnichannel experiences impacted by agreements? When customers interact with your brand, they need immediate access to comprehensive, consistent information. They need to be able to view or edit any information about their account on any device in a way that is optimized for that device. That includes easy-to-read branded forms, professional-looking documents and a dynamic signing experience. Dealing with those agreements can be the entire brand experience for some customers.

The same excellence is required in regard to security and reliability. A single security breach or downtime incident can damage a customer relationship enough to make them churn. When you’re considering vendors for the tools in your omnichannel stack, pay special attention to considerations such as uptime, compliance with national/international standards and security-focused resources.

Internally, there are additional benefits to be gained from connecting data sources across the agreement process. For starters, it can be a straightforward way to lower the cost of sales. By replacing repetitive, manual sales interactions with self-service digital channels, organizations can automate some of their more expensive sales motions. By digitizing more steps in the selling process and establishing connections between critical business systems (Salesforce, Microsoft, Google, Zoom, etc.) and delivery processes, customer-oriented teams can reduce data collection errors, improve productivity and free up employee time to do more personalized sales and customer service work.

CIOs can deliver customer success if they align with colleagues

CIOs have historically owned technology projects that serve internal audiences. Omnichannel is a unique opportunity to focus on initiatives that will directly serve external users. It’s a new problem that requires IT’s technological expertise to solve, but they shouldn’t do it alone.

To start, CIOs should focus on understanding the complexity of the customer journey. On the experience side, IT’s partnership with customer success is extremely valuable. Since the customer journey is changing, the best way to build is to start with a robust understanding of what customers want and how they act.

Next, IT teams can do what they do best: assemble customer-facing tools that are secure, available and integrated to enhance flexibility, convenience and security. This is easiest when you can rely on best-in-breed, out-of-the-box systems that work well with each other and with your home grown tech. Remember, a majority of today’s customer interactions with a brand are simply interactions with that brand’s technology, so any IT hiccups (like outages or downtime) can have damaging ramifications for the organization as a whole.

As the CIO lays the groundwork for an omnichannel experience, they have an opportunity to take the lead on a multifunctional initiative that serves customers in an exciting new way. It’s an occasion to lead a whole-organization effort to refocus on personalizing customer moments. In conjunction with the other team leaders, CIOs should be able to map out a clear path from customer experiences to revenue.

DocuSign tools play a role in perfecting your omnichannel experience

Creating an end-to-end omnichannel experience is complicated, but DocuSign has a long history of simplifying the agreement part of the process. Our tools are built to keep end users engaged without sacrificing security or availability. As your team builds a blueprint for better relationships with customers, consider how each of these products can contribute to your improved omnichannel experience:

• eSignature: conveniently create, send and sign contracts from almost anywhere, at any time, either in person or using any mobile device; provide a consistent sending and signing experience with templates and advanced signing options
• SMS delivery and access: instantly send customers alerts via text, allowing them to quickly open and electronically sign documents wherever they are, with a seamless mobile reading experience
• Web Forms: capture customer data and dynamically populate it into signature-ready agreements using a single easy-to-use interactive experience
• DocGen for eSignature: ensure consistent, professional-looking documents on any device
• ID Verification and Identity: secure customer data and reduce identity fraud
• Signing Insights: identify patterns in signing behaviors
• Integrations and APIs: save time by signing, sending and tracking agreements directly from the collaboration and productivity tools you already use; automate data transfer between systems to reduce errors and duplication

DocuSign is powering successful omnichannel experiences at modern organizations in every industry. For example, McCloskey Motors reduced the amount of time to sell a car by 75%. M&T Bank revolutionized notarization processes to finish document notarization in as fast as just 5 minutes. If your team is considering new ways to transform your customer experience, talk to us about how we support faster, easier agreement processes.