Omnichannel Customer Support (Your Guide to Get it Right ?)

What is the one secret to delivering an absolutely seamless customer experience? – an experience that WOWs customers.

It’s something all businesses know to be true, but only a few successfully do.

Yep. I am talking about an integrated, unified, not a siloed support experience across all available channels – omnichannel customer support software.

That’s what this post is all about.

What is it? How is it different from multi-channel? And what’s the best way YOU can get started? – find all the answers here.

An outline of topics this post covers:

• The best example of omnichannel customer support – Zappos
• What is the omnichannel customer support (infographic included)
• Difference between omnichannel and multichannel customer support
• X ways (that hardly fail) to deliver omnichannel support
• Why omnichannel customer support is a great way forward for your business

The Best Example of Omnichannel Customer Support – Zappos

If you were to ask me to name one brand whose customer service is exemplary, I’d mention Zappos without a second thought!

Its Twitter bio best describes the brand – Zappos is our name, and service is our game!

Zappos provides excellent customer service by implementing a powerful omnichannel strategy. Be it chat, email, tweet, call, or Facebook post; it’s always quick in responding to customers.

(What Zappos writes on their Facebook account)

The brand spends most of its time replying to queries and complaints on Twitter. The answers are clear, personalized, and helpful.

(Zappos’ quick replies to queries)

A personalized touch always works when it comes to consoling customers who have a poor experience with the company.

Zappos leads the way in multiple aspects of omnichannel support. It shows what can happen when all channels and employees work together seamlessly.

The brand’s message for businesses like yours ?

Today, many customers are moving away from the traditional customer service channels, like a phone. Instead, they gravitate towards channels of communication that don’t require talking on a phone call. Zappos noticed this shift as well, with only 4 percent of their customers calling in. – Zappos employees Jovahn Bergeron and Rob Siefker

Customers want a singular experience – not a siloed, repetitive one. They want their needs to be met quickly and painlessly.

This is precisely the omnichannel customer experience that brands across varied industries need to provide.

What is Omnichannel Customer Support Software? (Infographic included)

So, your support team might be getting queries on different channels – email, live chat, forms, etc.

Omnichannel is all about bringing these channels together for consistent, connected customer interactions.

It lets your support agents get the right customer information whenever they need it – from a single platform.

For instance, a customer drops in a query via social media. If it’s a complicated technical issue needing further assistance, they might be provided with an option to talk with an agent via chat or phone.

With omnichannel support software in place, an agent assigned the query will get the relevant context. On the other hand, the customer will not have to repeat their issue every time.

That way, you can make the entire support process smooth and seamless for agents and customers. It results in stronger customer relationships, lower customer churn, and increased business revenue.

Difference Between Omnichannel And Multichannel Customer Support

Multichannel customer support uses several different communication channels to interact with customers separately.

Each platform has its strategy, targets, and supports messaging goals, response team, user experience expectations, and protocol.

Statistics show that customers are not entirely into this approach.

90% of customers expect a consistent experience across all channels. They do not want to repeat their issues or talk with multiple agents.

Enter omnichannel customer support – Your team no longer needs to consider your channels as a separate island.

Use each channel as one to foster and develop a relationship with customers on their journey through your funnel.

4 Ways to Deliver Omnichannel Support.

In your quest to become more customer-centric by offering a unified support experience, here are some best practices that you need to consider.

1) Provide a self-service option to customers.

Most customers hardly want to call or email support teams – especially for tiny issues like password change, setting up a profile, editing XYZ, returning a product, etc.

That is why businesses prioritize providing them with self-service options like knowledge base articles, FAQs, how-to guides, video tutorials, and such.

Customers can find instant answers to their questions with a self-service knowledge base. It is one of the best things you need to smoothen your support processes.

Knowledge base articles come in handy every time support reps converse with customers. They can quickly find the right steps to help customers solve their queries.

Self-service streamlines support processes giving agents more time to focus on activities that help in business growth.

DeskXpand is one such help desk software with an amazing self-service knowledge base functionality. With it, building a knowledge base becomes as easy as ABC!

It provides you with a structured and organized knowledge base. You get pre-defined templates that save you the time to create articles from scratch. Create categories and tags for different topics to let users easily find what they are looking for.

One step toward including self-help will take a long way in streamlining support processes that ultimately save you more time.

2) Offer support via different social channels.

Instead of filling out a contact form, or starting an email conversation, dropping a complaint or query to a brand by tagging them on social media is easier – from a customer perspective.

That is why providing support on social media has become a necessity. Social media support lets you meet customers where they are to resolve their queries quickly.

But here’s the deal, how do you provide constant support, reply to comments, and engage with customers? All of these things are a lot of work.

A cutting-edge omnichannel customer support software comes with seamless integration with social media. You can integrate social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with your traditional customer support channels.

Now acknowledge requests, document responses, get instant context and achieve two-way communication through your social media pages.

Get started with DeskXpand

3) Think about all the aspects of the customer journey.

Finding out what your customers want requires a deep understanding of their daily activities, goals, challenges, purchase behavior, communication channels, and touchpoints through your funnel.

So, if you don’t have an upgraded version of your buyer personas, you will need to work on it before thinking about implementing anything!

Gather details about your target audience. Map out all the interactions your customer may make with your brand.

Find out what type of content they’ll encounter and when and where they will engage with it. Create a roadmap of potential interactions that you can set up to flow naturally between channels.

The cross-channel interactions will embed your brand into your customer’s everyday life. This will give them more opportunities to fall in love with your brand.

4) Unite All Departments on a Singular Goal

If your teams work in multiple silos disconnected from each department, you need an omnichannel approach to streamline and unify them.

Your customer support teams need to work together with sales, mobile, marketing, development, and IT teams to create a consistent customer experience and increase engagement.

With a unified omnichannel customer support software, you can gather your reps and define roles within each department.

If everyone is focused on the same goal, everyone will contribute their expertise to support the rest of the team.

You need to set clear expectations and then facilitate communication to keep everything on the same page.

Why Omnichannel Customer Support is a Great Way Forward For Your Business?

Customers like to do business with companies that know what they are doing and use pre-collected information to make life easier.

Did you know – 70% of customers believe connected processes are crucial to winning their trust? Over 80% of customers are willing to give relevant personal information in order to bridge the connection between their online and in-person experiences.

A successfully implemented omnichannel customer support offers myriad ways to prevent disconnected processes and departments. This brings representatives from all the departments together to fulfill a specific customer requirement.

For instance, if a customer begins messaging through your website’s integrated chatbot about an issue but then decides to continue through a phone call.

They’d at least hope that the company already has information about their issue and that they won’t have to explain their problem again to someone else.

Omnichannel customer support focuses on overall customer satisfaction and makes the experience smoother, consistent, and highly personalized for customers.

How can DeskXpand help you?

DeskXpand is a helpdesk management software with omnichannel capabilities. It lets you deliver a cohesive support experience across all support channels.

You no longer need to switch multiple channels/accounts back and forth. It lets you integrate a comprehensive knowledge base (a self-service channel) to strengthen your support process.

All – with a unified and extremely easy-to-use interface. No clutter, no confusion, but a seamless experience that smooths your entire support process.

Get started with DeskXpand

* This article was written in collaboration with Yesha Bhatt.