In his article over at fourthsource.com, Felix Velarde posits 2013 will be the year of Total Customer Engagement. You should click over to read the entire piece, but there are a few points I wanted to highlight that we at USAN think are spot-on accurate.

“Most companies today have a web strategy, which may include e-commerce. They will also have a nascent social media strategy, a Google Adwords programme, and maybe an eCRM programme serving segmented comms to different sets of customers, split by value, behaviour, demographics and motivations. All of which have given businesses learning and insights into how they engage with customers using ‘new’(ish) channels. What’s lacking is integration. The sea change in 2013 requires a fresh way of thinking about customer engagement, which puts the customer at the centre. The trends feeding this are the shift in the balance of power from brand to customer, driven by the shift towards peer decision facilitated by social media, and the power of collective reviews.”

The key point here is the fact that integration is missing. In most companies, customer-facing systems were bought prior to the recent communications explosion. As they try to connect disparate systems, companies are being challenged not just by the integration issue, but delivering a consistent experience across these channels. USAN is one company (maybe the only one?) that has a single software solution, and the expertise, that solves this problem. After you read Felix’s article, click back over to learn more about our Customer Engagement platform.

Felix also sagely states, “This kind of approach is essentially multi-channel and channel-neutral. It’s also measurable and of course by its very nature future proof.” Being channel agnostic really is the way of the future, as we’ve been saying for quite some time.