At surface level, brands have a plethora of avenues to connect to their consumers. But alas, it’s the paradox of choice: How do brands prioritize their technology investments to maximize consumer reach?

Forrester recommends that brands use its POST methodology to make smart technology choices to serve their customers through digital or mobile experiences:

  • People: Where do your customers access internet services? How do they access internet
    services?
  • Objectives: What are your business goals?
  • Strategy: What services, content, and features do you want to offer?
  • Technology: What interaction modes, as well as channels, platforms, and devices, best align
    with your strategy, objectives, and customers?

The first step in this process is understanding where your customers access the internet. Consumers access internet services on an average of 12 devices, platforms, and channels (see the Forrester report, “The 3D Connected Consumer In 2020” report).

Next, brands must understand how consumers engage with internet services. This ecosystem is increasingly complex. For example, consumers could use direct messaging to access account information or even purchase a pizza. They could do this via live chat on a brand’s app on their smartphone or do it on a third-party instant messaging platform on their tablet. But just because a customer is willing to use direct messaging to communicate with friends doesn’t mean they are willing or even comfortable using the same interaction mode to access account information or purchase a pizza.

We’ve spent the past several years working to build a three-dimensional data set to remove the guesswork from this process of understanding exactly how consumers engage with internet services. We call this data set the Moments Map.

The key is understanding not just how your consumers connect to the internet but how likely they are to use tools such as chatbots and digital assistants to interact with your company. Purchasing a round-trip ticket to France using these tools is much different than setting a timer for the dinner in the oven.

The 2020 version of the Forrester Moments Map (previously known as the Moments Index), published today, is complete with updated data to help companies make smart digital-experience channel choices. We will also host a webinar on September 22 to walk through the Moments Map data and how digital business leaders can use this data to inform strategic tech investments. Check out our report here, and register for our webinar here.