I recently went through two omnichannel experiences, one that started well but went downhill soon thereafter and another that was a disaster from the beginning.

Before I deep dive into my experiences, omnichannel is where a single business process is deliberately split across multiple channels so that each channel does what it's really good at and each channel hop appears natural to the customer. ROBO (Research Online Buy Offline), Showrooming (Research in store and buy online), ROMBOW (Research On Mobile, Buy On Web) are all examples of omnichannel. More on omnichannel can be found here.

In this post, I'll describe the first omnichannel fiasco I experienced.

This was when I'd recently applied online for a Standard Chartered Bank credit card. After filling out my personal information, I came to the stage where I had to submit KYC documentation. Now, I know that you can scan documents and upload them online but I always have a problem with scanning passport, drivers license and any other document used for ID and address proof - the photophraph inevitably appears smudged. Therefore, I'm not a fan of online uploads of KYC documentation. Looks like I'm not alone since the portal didn't have any UPLOAD DOCUMENTS button. Instead, it asked me to grant an appointment when someone from the bank would visit me and collect my documents in person.

This was the peak of my omnichannel experience. From there, things rapidly went downhill.

No one from the bank visited me on the said date and time. Several weeks have passed since then. I haven't heard from the bank. I even tweeted a complaint but there's radio silence from the bank's side.

https://twitter.com/GTM360/statuses/408242167472472064

I've given up on my application. Since credit card is a buyer's market, I can easily get one from any number of other banks. So, the loss is not mine.

In my next post, I'll describe my second omnichannel experience that was a fiasco from the word go. Watch this space.