“Cross-channel” is a term (or shall I say a buzzword) that is thrown around by many and understood by few. Seldom does a week go by that a vendor or client mentioning their objectives or strategy doesn’t throw out “cross-channel” or “multi-channel” or something along those lines.

With this in mind, I have made it my personal goal to seek out real-world examples of cross-channel at work; examples that have a clear benefit both to a customer and to a provider. Progressive Insurance’s cross-channel save and retrieve functionality is a great example of cross channel at work that I have written about before, but I recently came across another:

 Wells Fargo offering customers the opportunity to email ATM receipts to their email address on record.

This feature gets at the heart of a concept I have been thinking about for a while; the concept that the Web can have a role to play in enhancing offline processes that already exist. I mean the emailed receipt doesn’t replace the trip to the ATM, but it does make it better by: