Gilbane 2013 – Reflecting on the content distribution journey
By Frank Schneider, VP of Customer Experience Solutions
“Content may be king, but distribution is queen, and she is wearing the pants.”
-Jonathan Perelman, VP of Agency Strategy, Buzzfeed
Meghan Walsh, Senior Director, eCommerce Platform System Management, Marriott International, set the tone for an excellent conference in her keynote last week at the Gilbane Conference 2013 in Boston. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the current digital content management and customer experience markets, while getting a better read on the pulse of business and the appetite/strategies for change in this rapidly evolving space.
Personally, I was excited to hear thought leaders expound upon the challenges and theorize for solutions to the content delivery climate in which businesses operate today. It was validating to know that Creative Virtual’s approach to omnichannel maturity and the distribution of personalized, consistent, compliant, and correct answers to multi-faceted questions across all customer journey touchpoints is becoming increasingly critical to ensuring customer experience is effective, efficient and engaging.
Specifically, having the opportunity to speak in Track T with moderator, Marc Strohlein, Principal, Agile Business Logic and Director, Forte Research Systems and co-panel member Luke Barton, Technical Director, Siteworx, was a great deal of fun. Marc did a great job of setting the stage for the mobile/technical track and adeptly encouraged audience participation with thought provoking questions, while Luke followed-up my multimodal interface presentation with a fascinating glimpse into the future of mobile engagement in retail with geo-location technology for intuitive rapid delivery of relevant personalized content and promotional offers to enhance the shopping experience.
I quickly learned, via audience participation, that Creative Virtual’s “type, talk, tap” mantra for multimodal mobile UI is indeed strong, but businesses need help taking the first step of a long content distribution journey of their own. Based on the feedback and interaction I received, allow me to provide a few first steps to mobile content delivery strategy.
1.) Understand customer questions/tasks in mobile – what are your customers currently asking your contact center? What are they trying to accomplish via mobile? Thoroughly review your interaction history and even conversation transcripts to understand where the easy wins lie. Take first narrow steps to improve mobile support and content delivery.
2.) Organize content in an omnichannel knowledge management system – part shameless plug, part seemingly daunting task – you must take inventory of what knowledge is stored where and try to uncover a way to break down silos to organize and then unleash content across all channels.
3.) Not an App for that? – don’t be overwhelmed by developing a mobile app. Mobile pages and mobile tasks can be easily accessible with friendly, simple UI via HTML5. Find a vendor who can help you enable that type of smooth transition to mobile content delivery.
Gilbane 2013 was a great experience, and helped set the tone for how Creative Virtual needs to position itself to facilitate the first step in mobile content distribution for customers. I am eager to see what 2014 brings after having learned that we are indeed at the right place, in the right time, with the right solutions and people to address the market’s yearning for better, faster, simpler, more accurate mobile content delivery and customer engagement. I look forward to presenting again next year and seeing the results of the coming year.
