What Omnichannel Customer Service Really Is (An Extended Approach)

We live in the era of instant customer satisfaction. Customer savviness and their increasing demands have become a major driving force for companies to become more customer-centric. And these demands will continue to rise in the future as well.

Brands are doing everything they can to make themselves widely available to customers. But, many struggle to implement a service strategy that truly meets customers to their specific terms. They need to incorporate a strategy that drives customer satisfaction and retention at all times. This requires an omnichannel customer support strategy.

Omnichannel customer experience brings you a lot closer to your customers and get a deeper context about their problems.

Omnichannel customer service has become the new benchmark for serving exceptional experiences. Omnichannel support is one of the best ways to hook your customers to use your products or services and retain them indefinitely. The current definition of omnichannel has been watered down as “providing multiple channels of communication.”

As businesses are catching up with Omnichannel customer support, the core definition has expanded. And this is exactly what we’re going to talk about in this blog. This blog will take you through in-depth revelations of omnichannel customer support and the strategies that revolve around it.

Let’s begin with understanding omnichannel in a deeper context. We’ll talk about omnichannel experiences and their importance in a broader aspect. We’ll also discuss the benefits and some real-time strategies and tips to serve a seamless omnichannel experience.

What Does Omnichannel Mean in Larger Context?

As we stated earlier, omnichannel experiences are not limited to providing multiple channels for communication. They vary from customer to customer and extend beyond communication.

Omnichannel strategies are not just limited to providing convenient channels of communication to the customers, or communicating with them through these channels seamlessly. It also includes providing support across all popular websites, apps, and devices that your customers use. And obviously, you must provide support on these channels round the clock.

A true omnichannel experience includes providing seamless transitions from one channel to the next. For instance, if the customer wants to switch channels, they don’t want to start from scratch and repeat providing all the information again.

A study from Forrester states that 73% of customers say that a good customer experience is where the company values their time. In fact, it is the most important thing a company can do.

Hence, the transition from one channel to another in a hassle-free manner for both customers and agents is also a part of omnichannel customer support.

A true omnichannel strategy helps companies better understand the customers. With every interaction, they get closer to serving a personalized experience. This is because the data remains tethered to the customer rather than the ticket.

Agents can have a holistic view of each customer’s journey with the brand on a single screen. They’re empowered to deliver personalized and consistent support without having to switch between different systems or accounts. This ultimately reduces the response time and drives customer loyalty.

The term omnichannel is also used in retail and marketing. Although the specific details are way too different, the fundamental concept is the same: one consistent experience regardless of channels. For instance, an eCommerce business might enable purchases through channels other than its websites (like messaging threads of a social media channel, a mobile app, etc.)

Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Support

So, the above section answers all the “whats” of omnichannel customer support. Now let us look at the “Whys”. Here are some benefits of serving an omnichannel experience:

• Customers get more options to interact with the business.
• Agents can deliver solutions that are backed by context.
• Improves customer satisfaction and eventually customer retention rate.
• Improves the sales and the related online and offline experiences.
• Improves the quality of customer data and allows you to collect more relevant data.
• It lets businesses cater to a wide range of audiences.
• It is convenient to the customers. This improves the lifetime value of a customer.
• Prevents agent collision and helps drive consistent resolution
• It helps agents deliver a consistent experience across channels.

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How to Create a Real-Time Omnichannel Support Experience

Omnichannel Experience gives businesses the ability to talk to the right customers, in the right place, without sacrificing context along the way.

Creating a real-time omnichannel experience for customers across all channels takes a lot of effort. Here are some tips to create an omnichannel presence for your business:

1. Extend Your Support To Every Channel Possible

The very first step in creating an omnichannel strategy is to create a presence across all channels. Especially, the channels that your customers demand. This includes creating a presence on the website, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. Take out your time building a presence on all channels.

2. Use an Omnichannel Customer Support Software

52% of the customers who have a bad customer service experience with a brand will immediately stop buying from them. Studies show 64% of customers say that they expect to respond to them in real-time.

You may be wondering how to satisfy these many customer needs with such high expectations. This is only possible if you integrate an omnichannel solution into your customer support. An omnichannel support software comes with inbuilt functionalities to manage all the channels from a single interface.

Through an omnichannel support software with roles and permissions defined, you can harness seamless support. Mind you, omnichannel support is different from multi-channel support (which is usually used by businesses and creates chaos.)

According to research, 98% of Americans switch between multiple devices on the same day. Customers want the flexibility to start a process on a laptop and then complete the same on their mobile phones. So, if you’re not providing this flexibility to switch between devices, then be ready to face the consequences (which could be losing customers or, much worse).

You cannot share context and customer history across channels with the multichannel approach. Omnichannel brings all the channels together and converts the queries from various channels into the form of tickets.

Omnichannel support software gives your customers a fully integrated, unified customer support experience with your company across various channels and devices.

Read more: Omnichannel Customer Support Software: A Key to Ace Customer Support

3. Your Goal is Improving Customer Experience: So Focus on That

Now that you’ve built your presence on all channels. The next thing you need to do is focus more on customer experience and less on channels. The channel is not the real focus; providing it is just the beginning of delivering good customer support.

The whole point of omnichannel support is that it enables you to deliver a consistent experience to your customers. The quality of support must be the same regardless of the channel. Train your agents to personalize it enough to offer more flexibility to your customers. Let the customers decide the course of their support.

4. Create a Seamless Experience on Mobile

A lot of customers use handheld devices (like smartphones and tablets) for surfing the internet, placing an order, or registering a complaint. If you are not optimizing your business for a seamless experience on mobile phones, then you’re simply leaving money on the table for someone else to grab.

Begin with a mobile-optimized site with a GREAT user interface. The navigation flow must be as simple as possible. If the user gets confused and cannot find the right window to register their complaint, you lose them. You can also integrate a live chat on your website.

5. Engage with Customers Across all Channels

So, you’ve brought together all your channels, implemented an omnichannel customer support software, and created a terrific UI for the mobile-friendly experience. The last thing is to engage with your customers across these channels.

There is a need to engage your customers to foster a better and long-term relationship with them. Customers are more likely to buy from brands they resonate with (on a somewhat personal level) and follow on social media.

The Bottom Line

Technological tools integrated with the latest features can help you effectively create an omnichannel experience. DeskXpand is one such tool. It is a robust omnichannel customer support software that lets you merge all your customer-facing channels into a single platform. You no longer need to switch between multiple channels/accounts back and forth. It lets you integrate a comprehensive knowledge base (a self-service channel) to strengthen your support process.

We are ISO27001 certified portal experts with 14+ years of industry experience. We aim to help you achieve complete visibility and attain a high-resolution rate through omnichannel customer support software. So, would you like to take a trial?

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