Gone are the days of one-touch shopping apps, AI-based customer support, and other traditional marketing tools. To replace all of them, we now have Omnichannel—the new norm.
It is no news that almost every industry is going gaga over this new approach, and we are sure that you too may have already heard or read about it as well.
If you are a company that values customers and always thrives to offer them an excellent experience, let us tell you there’s no better approach than omnichannel customer service. However, you will first have to implement some well-defined omnichannel customer service strategies to build an effective system.
In this blog, we have discussed everything about Omnichannel support system, right from its meaning to seven exclusive strategies that will definitely help you.
So, shall we dive in?
Omnichannel Customer Service: A Quick Glance!
Before we discuss the omnichannel customer support strategies, let us first quickly understand omnichannel customer support in detail:
What is Omnichannel Customer Service?
The whole point of omnichannel customer service is to offer excellent experience to customers by simply integrating different channels in one system. This, in turn, helps customer service providers to get a clear picture of interactions of their customers, thereby addressing their issues in no time.
Importance of Omnichannel Customer Service
As an old saying goes, customers are the real king and who does not want to provide a seamless experience to them? A survey by Salesforce stated that 80 percent of consumers said that the experience an organization offers is equally vital as its services and products. This is where omnichannel customer service comes into the picture. When a company provides integrated customer omnichannel service and touchpoints to its customers, they will never find it difficult to get continuous and personalized support. As a result, the company can:
✓ Achieve greater customer insights
✓ Increase purchase ratio
✓ Improve efficiency of customer service
✓ Save costs
To acquire the above benefits and get good returns in the long run, one should effectively implement omnichannel customer support.
How it Works?
Let us understand it with a simple omnichannel customer service example:
Imagine Payal get in touch with XYZ company through live chat to discuss an issue she has been facing with one of their products. The very next day, she again called their customer service agent. The agent, on the other hand, quickly checks the chat history of Payal and gets a clear picture of the issue and provides her with the relevant solution. Afterward, Payal also gets follow-up email with the solution for her concern.
In the above example, Payal explained her issue only once and she got the answer seamlessly. Now, this is only possible if there is smooth integration across different channels and that is exactly how omnichannel customer service system works.
Now that you know the meaning, importance, and function of omnichannel system, it is now time to discover the strategies in the next section!
7 Effective Omnichannel Customer Service Strategies
There are many but here are the most effective seven omnichannel customer Service strategies you must implement:
1. Research
The very first omnichannel customer service strategy is thorough research. It is one of the most important steps because it will help you to understand the pulse of your customers and collect information from different channels.
How Can You Make It Happen?
✓ Build clear buyer persona
✓ Check their demographics, psychographics, and behaviors
✓ Do surveys and conduct interviews
✓ Rely on information of your CRM systems and insights from social media as well as website
✓ Check ongoing trends
2. Search
Once you are done with the research, you will get a basic idea of your target audiences. Now, go a little further and understand your customer persona more deeply. When you know it, create different profiles of your target audience depending on their demographics, channel preferences, and behaviors.
How Can You Make It Happen?
✓ Examine existing database of your customers
✓ Analyze the interactions of your customers on various channels
✓ Understand their journey as well as process of making decisions
3. Improve
The third step is to ensure that you provide a good customer journey. Say, for instance, you should not be representing your brand differently on different channels; this may eventually create confusion. Your brand image should be consistent every time, everywhere to ensure smooth customer experience.
How Can You Make It Happen?
✓ Build a complete brand style guide
✓ Regularly audit and check if your brand image is consistently presented in all channels
✓ Identify potential pain points in customer journey
Leverage the next-gen solutions for your digital customer experience
4. Choose
This is one of the most crucial stages where you will have to choose the right channels for building an effective omnichannel support system. Some common customer service channels are as follows:
Live chat support
Phone support
Email support
Chatbots and voice bots
Video chat support
Social media
Instant messaging applications
There is apparently no dearth of channels, but you must choose the channels which you feel your customers have a strong presence in. Also, make sure that the channels you choose can be switched from online to offline interactions or between various platforms by your customers.
How Can You Make It Happen?
✓ Check the present state of your customer support channels
✓ Understand your customers and their preferences for channels
✓ Integrate channels to offer omnichannel experiences
✓ Ensure your team knows how to manage all the channels properly
5. Train
From researching the target audience to choosing the right channels, you did everything step by step without a failure. Likewise, training the employees is also extremely important. When we say train, we mean explaining to them your omnichannel approach and empowering them with the right skills and resources they require. Additionally, cross-functional communication should also be encouraged to unify silos and offer a single view of customer engagement.
How Can You Make It Happen?
✓ Do regular workshops on omnichannel strategy
✓ Give them training of tools & technologies used in the omnichannel approach
✓ Build a centralized knowledge base accessible to all for consistent data
6. Measure
Just implementing omnichannel support system strategies will not give you the desired results. For that you should also keep measuring the success of your strategies. Closely analyze the retrieved information and understand your customer behaviors on a regular basis. This certainly will help you to find out the pitfalls, address them in no time, and plan accordingly for the future.
How Can You Make It Happen?
✓ Create and implement proper KPIs (key performance indicators) for your strategy
✓ Utilize analytics tools to check customer interactions across all channels
✓ Do regular customer feedback sessions or customer satisfaction surveys
7. Encourage
As we already mentioned in the previous point, encouraging customers to share their feedback can empower you to enhance the omnichannel customer engagement as well as experience and improve customer trust like never before. This strategy may seem basic to many but the results it reaps are unpredictable.
How Can You Make It Happen?
✓ Ask for customer feedback after a service call
✓ Provide rewards or incentives for their valuable feedback and suggestions
✓ Build a customer advisory board to collect data and feedback
Omnichannel Customer Service Examples and Use Cases
A well-known e-commerce company in India always visioned to provide an excellent customer support experience (CX) but struggled to not just improve their CX but also expand omnichannel capabilities. After a long time of struggling, the company decided to rely on JindalX—a leading omnichannel retail technology provider and this is how their issues were addressed in no time:
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Challenge
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Solution Provided
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Results
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|---|---|---|
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Their customer experiences varied differently between online and offline channels, leading to customer frustration and reduced brand loyalty.
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JindalX implemented a unified platform that connected their customers smoothly in both online and offline stores, leading to consistent pricing, promotions, and inventory availability across all channels.
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Customers had a consistent, smooth shopping experience across all touchpoints, resulting in increased trust and loyalty.
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Wrapping Up
There you go!
You now have seven strategies to build an effective omnichannel customer service system.
Implementing an effective omnichannel service system is a necessity more than a choice today, especially for BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) providers.
If you get it right, your business can reap various benefits including smooth and integrated experience that meets customers where they are.
As you take a step ahead and rely on an omnichannel customer service system, do not forget to keep the needs of your clients first and stay ahead of all the emerging trends.
So, are you still waiting for your competitors to outpace you? High time for you to embrace omnichannel support system to revolutionize your customer experience—it is now or never!
