7.1.1. Rethinking the experience when it becomes omnichannel

Sociology and psychology define an individual’s experience as a subjective and cognitive activity that contributes to the construction of the individual, especially if they are extreme experiences. When we visualize consumer behavior, the consumer experience is considered as a personal experience resulting from “an interaction that is pleasant, memorable and meaningful” [KWO 07] between an individual and an object. This personal experience is “often emotionally charged” and is by nature subjective. Also its perception varies from one individual to another [ROE 08].

The experience is also characterized by the intensity of the emotional responses it generates in the consumer [ROE 08] and by “the sum of the positive or negative consequences derived from the use of a good or service” [IDF 02]. The challenge of marketing is, therefore, to provide the consumer with a memorable, even extraordinary experience, even if ordinary experiences can also be a source of pleasure.

In the era of omnichannel and the multiplicity of touchpoints, the uniqueness of experience lies in the fact that in most cases, a customer’s buying experience is no longer experienced with regard to a single touchpoint, but to several. Indeed, the consumer takes the best of each touchpoint throughout his decision-making process. Thus, in the era of the digitization of the purchasing process, the majority of individuals begin their purchasing journey online to finalize their transaction offline. Such behaviors, qualified as ROPO (Read On-line, Purchase Off-Line) or ROBO (Read On-Line, Buy Off-line), are now the norm. Reverse behaviors, known as showrooming, describe behaviors in which the customers enter into the physical sphere to reduce their perceived risk or to receive advice from the shop assistant before finally completing their transaction on the Internet. Multiple round trips between channels are also possible. Moreover, today’s purchasing trajectories are all the more complex as touchpoints have been multiplied and as customers can move from one to the other throughout the same purchasing trajectory. For example, whether it is for a purchase or a complaint, a customer can start a self-care journey on an online site, send an e-mail, be connected or call an online advisor, and then come into the store to get an advisor’s opinion. Similarly, if their journey is completely digital, they can use several “devices” (computers, tablets, smartphones). In the same way, some companies put “call-to-action buttons” on their website such as click-to-chat, click-to-call-video, etc. By doing that, they propose that their visitors live an omni-channel experience through several points of contact that facilitate the buying process.

The transition between touchpoints, which the company makes available to its customers so that they can contact it as they wish, invites one to rethink the experience offered to customers. It is no longer simply a question of offering an “optimal experience” on each of the touchpoints. Actually, the succession of different optimal experiences may not lead to an optimal overall experience. It is important to provide them with a pleasant overall experience that will make them want to come back and recommend the company to others in their physical or virtual sphere. It is, therefore, necessary that the sum of the microexperiences received at several places leaves a positive memory. The experience at the end of the process must be perceived as positive and the memories left by the emotions felt along the way to the purchase must be pleasant.

7.1.2. From the integration of the Internet into the purchasing process to omnichannel: toward a sublimation of the customer experience?

7.1.3. Creating an unforgettable memory souvenir because of the fluidity between “touchpoints”

To provide the customer with a quality overall experience, one of the challenges is to reduce the irritability caused by the multiplicity of touchpoints throughout the customer’s decision-making process.

In this perspective, some authors [BAR 11, ACH 05] indicate that the objective is to facilitate the passage from one touchpoint to another to create fluidity between the touchpoints, which in addition fosters a “lock-in effect”. Of course, this search for fluidity is closely related to the notion of customer effort and the “customer effort score”, even if this indicator must be considered here when moving from one touchpoint to another.

Such fluidity is probably a way of avoiding the negative emotions that result from the difficulty, from the trouble encountered when attempting to easily continue a journey started with another touchpoint. If such an experience is a way of managing negative emotions, is it a way of creating a rewarding experience that the customer will remember? By dint of fluidity, is there not a risk of creating a tasteless experience? Can an extreme fluidity with an ultra-fast passage not be a vector for a poorer customer experience? If such fluidity seems logical to create a “nonexperience” for common purchases, what about high symbolic value purchases [NPV 17]?

So the question today is not only how to create a seamless experience, but how to create a positively memorable omnichannel experience. The question of the transition from one touchpoint to another is no longer a simple one, in terms of fluidity, but also in the role of each of these touchpoints in the lived experience or in the memory of the lived experience. What are the moments of truth or key milestones in building a memorable and quality omnichannel experience? Do some touchpoints have a greater ability to create a meaningful experience that is memorable and positively colors the whole perceived experience? Do they have the ability to compensate for emotions or negative experiences in other channels? Are there compensatory touchpoint models involved in the evaluation of an omnichannel journey? Can an experience with one touchpoint compensate for negative experiences elsewhere?

7.2.1. When the experience with a touchpoint is the continuity of an experience started elsewhere

A reflection on the optimization of experience first involves identifying the different dimensions of the experience in order to understand what the potential sources of disruption or value creation are when associated with a change in touchpoints or how microexperiences can follow one another.

In this regard, based on research conducted in consumer behavior, Camélis [CAM 08] identifies five dimensions of the service experience: sensory activities that refer to the five senses that can be activated during the experience, emotional activities that refer to emotions experienced throughout the experience, cognitive activities through the customer’s reasoning, thoughts and reflections during the experience, behavioral activities that refer to the customer’s behavior and finally social activities that refer to interactions that are created with other people during the experience.

An omnichannel experience, by definition, implies a change in touchpoint on the same purchasing journey, which is a potential source of disruption on each of these dimensions, whether cognitive, behavioral, social, emotional and sensorial, especially since the experiences lived according to each of the touchpoints are, by nature, different. For example, an experience in self-care, with an online advisor or in-store is, in essence, very different. The possible disruption in the purchasing process is, therefore, explained by the change in touchpoint, but also by the specific feature of each touchpoint to provide unique microexperiences. Ensuring continuity or sometimes deliberately causing disruption when changing touchpoints depends on the customer’s logic and the goals sought by the customer. For example, some authors indicate that the multichannel approach is associated with greater efficiency (physical and cognitive effort, time) and/or productivity gains (money), both in purchases that are not very involving [BEL 04, BEL 05] and in purchases that are involving [NPV 12].

7.2.2. The TEAV model as a theoretical basis for the analysis of omnichannel trajectories

The question of the omnichannel experiment can be analyzed in light of successive microexperiences, one of which is a continuation of another. But it can also be appreciated in a more holistic way. It is no longer simply a question of considering an experience that is part of the succession of another, but of considering the omnichannel experience in its entirety. The TEAV paradigm proposed by Hirschman and Holbrook [HIR 86] provides an interesting framework for further reflection in this regard and for analyzing the omnichannel experience in a holistic way.

While Hirschman and Holbrook [HIR 82] retained in their article on the experiential aspects of consumption, a linear three-phase approach (cognition, affect, behavior), a few years later, they [HIR 86] moved away from this conception of information processing models to propose the TEAV (thought–emotion–activity–value) paradigm. Thus, the linear process of CABS (cognition–affect–behavior–satisfaction) is replaced by a less linear and more complex network that involves consumer thinking, emotions and activity, which includes both actions and reactions and the value that is derived from lived experiences.

The “customer journey” where multiple “touchpoints” can be linked in the era of omnichannels can be revisited or rethought in light of the TEAV paradigm in which consumer thinking, emotions and activity play a central role so that value can be created.

Faced with the multiplicity of microexperiences that are experienced during the same shopping experience, the question of the sequence of consumer thoughts, emotions and activities arises, knowing that, by definition, these consumer thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions can also take place at different moments in time. How can the orchestration of these touchpoints create thoughts, emotions and activities that can create value for the consumer? Is continuity in thought, emotion and activity a guarantee of value for the customer? Knowing that each microexperience is separated by time or change in touchpoints, how is this coherence achieved in the customer’s system of thought, emotions and activities?

7.2.3. The contents of the omnichannel experience approached in a holistic way

Thus, if “the service experience represents for the customer a slice of life dedicated to consumption during which he acts and interacts in a universe controlled by the company”, the omnichannel experience can be considered as “several successive slices of life dedicated to consumption during which he acts and interacts with several distinct universes controlled by the company and in which he places his own universes there” [ROE 08].

Claire Roederer’s [ROE 08] theory focuses on the content of the experience, its objective being, more precisely, to isolate its stable components, whatever the context. Thus, while the author indicates that the background of each experience is undeniably dependent on its context, it is nevertheless possible to identify dimensions that will be common to any consumer experience. These dimensions, applied to a cross-channel context [COL 16], provide an interesting theoretical basis for understanding the broader customer experience. In addition, the content of the experience as described by Roederer makes it possible to understand an experience that is based on several touchpoints in its entirety. Roederer identifies four dimensions in experience: hedonic-sensory, rhetorical, temporal and praxeological dimensions.

The hedonic-sensory dimension of the experience, an individual and selfcentered dimension, refers to the pleasure/displeasure associated with the individual’s experience during the purchasing act.

The rhetorical dimension of the experience refers to the object consumed as a vector of meanings. The shopping experience is a meaningful vehicle. Thus, the elements “of an experiential context, and among them, the consummate object, constitute signs (carriers of meaning) that the subject interprets and, in a way, puts at the service of a broader meaning that the experience has for the individual” [ROE 08]. These signs, which carry meaning, are elements of the story that the subjects can tell or tell themselves about the situation. It is, therefore, important to discover the meaning built up over the course of the narrative of experience, and therefore here as the microexperiences unfold.

The third dimension of the content of experience refers to time. This concerns the attention paid to time during the experience. The customer, as an acting individual, is aware of time, measurement and control. Such a relationship with time depends on the customer’s temporal orientation [BER 90], but also on the experiential context. Time is considered as “a time to be filled”, a “resource to be controlled” or as a “pace to be slowed down”.

Finally, the last dimension of experience identified in Roederer’s work is the praxeological dimension of the experience where the individual manages their own experience.

These dimensions, by their decontextualized nature, make it possible to understand the experience, even globally, including when it is lived on different points of contact. When the experience becomes “omnichannel” and different touchpoints are activated by the customer to contact the company or by the company to elicit a reaction from the customer, it is the entire content of the experience and therefore all dimensions that can be impacted.

The hedonic-sensory dimension and pleasure/displeasure can be expressed not only on the lived experience with each of the touchpoints but also on the omnichannel experience as a whole. Pleasure and displeasure can be felt both on each touchpoint and on the entire “touchpoint journeys”.

The question is, therefore, to locate the sources of displeasure and/or that of pleasure. The pleasure or displeasure can arise from a continuity in the succession of experiences or, on the contrary, from discontinuities through emotions, surprises, through experiential or emotional jumps. It all depends on the customer’s purchasing logic and objective. A growing pleasure among the succession of touchpoints could, for example, generate a stronger memory of the experience. The question of the story that the individuals tell themselves or others refers to the meaning that they construct through the narrative of their microexperiences on the different touchpoints within the same buying experience. The question, therefore, arises from a coherence of historic discourses, without these discourses leading to an impoverishment or an extreme simplification of the story. The history refers not only to the one that the company tells its customers about the touchpoints, but also to the one that the customers will be able to tell themselves in this back-and-forth between touchpoints, which invites us to shift the logic of the company’s “story telling” to that of the customer.

The question of the praxeological dimension of experience can also be raised. The consumer, who has taken power over the Internet, is becoming a driver of their own experience. The implementation of an omnichannel platform responds to this steering logic, since the customer can theoretically manage their experience of the place and in the way they wish remotely, in the physical or virtual world. But such steering can take place if the omnichannel platform gives the customer the impression of being the master and actor in building their own experience.

Finally, there is the question of the relationship with time. The customer, as an acting individual, is aware of time, measurement and control. Then omni channel can be used to control time, slow it down or accelerate it.

7.2.4. An experience that is exacerbated when it is experienced over several channels?

Empirical research [COL 16] has made it possible to understand the dimensions of a “meta-shopping experience” [ANT 13] consisting of a multiplicity of microexperiences that can take place successively or simultaneously in the real and virtual world.

This research shows that the identification of the dimensions of cross-channel experience very logically joins, because of their decontextualized nature, those identified in a point-of-sale experience by Roederer [ROE 08, ROE 12]. In addition, beyond the four dimensions of Roederer’s experience (hedonic-sensory, praxeo, rhetorical and temporal), the research identifies a fifth dimension of the crosschannel experience, namely a social dimension and a more intense experience of each of the dimensions of experience, compared to what is experienced on a single channel.

Indeed, not only the hedonic-sensory dimension is exacerbated by the multiplicity of stimuli, but also the praxeological dimension. Feeling that they have control over the channels that they can operate as they please, the indivuals manage their own experience, according to their preferences, their current desires and career path. This contributes to enriching the meaning attributed to their action, which refers to the rhetorical dimension of experience, through the freedom and power provided by the experience lived on different channels. In addition, the consumers have control over the temporal dimension, which they control more or less consciously by activating the channels as they see fit to accelerate time or slow it down according to the sensations they wish to experience and their own constraints. As for the social space, it is expanded and is based on both the virtual and physical sphere. The consumer can, therefore, be accompanied or advised virtually or physically.