Omnichannel Support

Omnichannel support is an approach to customer service where the goal is to provide a seamless customer experience across multiple channels. This makes it easier for the customer to reach out to a brand using phone, email, chat, social media, and in-store. Across these interactions, the brand does not lose the context of the customer journey at any given point. With this approach, businesses can offer consistent and personalized support to each of these customers. This improves satisfaction levels and brand loyalty!

Key Elements of Omnichannel Support

Let’s delve into what omnichannel support looks like in practice.

Seamless Integration: Omnichannel support by its very nature means that customers can use and switch between channels without having to repeat themselves. An example of this may be a customer reaching out via chat or email. After this, if the person calls the company’s support line, the agent is already aware of the customer’s previous interactions.
Unified Customer Profiles: True multichannel customer service requires businesses to maintain centralized customer profiles that consolidate customer preferences, their interactions, and purchase history. This is usually done using a powerful CRM tool with the right integrations in place. This information is then pulled up using the customer’s phone number, membership number, or user ID. Customer service agents also benefit from this, as they don’t need to repeat some of the questions that the customer may have answered before.
Real-Time Synchronization: Omnichannel customer service platforms provide real-time data sharing across multiple channels. Any customer concerns, complaints, or requests get immediately logged to a central system for the customer service team to look at. So even if the channel changes, the customer information remains intact.

Benefits of Omnichannel Support

Omnichannel support offers a lot of benefits to your customers, the customer service reps, and to you as a brand owner.

Improved Customer Satisfaction: The biggest and most impactful reason to implement omnichannel support is to serve your customers better. With the convenience and the consistency of support available, customers find it easier to get answers and resolve their queries. With no disruptions or repeated explanations, customers use less effort overall trying to get in touch. This improves experience and in turn, improves satisfaction.
Better Retention Rates: Personalization and quick resolution rates make the customer feel that their issues matter. A brand that is aware of its customer’s issues comes off as caring/competent. This increases brand loyalty.
Better Agent Efficiency: Omnichannel support is also better for agents. When they can view customer interactions and queries across multiple channels, they don’t need to repeat themselves to gather information again. This improves productivity and job satisfaction.
Insights backed by Data: An omnichannel customer service software gathers data from all platforms. This includes customer behaviors, preferences, and common pain points. This is very useful to gauge product performance and support quality. You can then use this feedback to refine both your product and the kind of support you offer.

Implementing Omnichannel Support

To get started, you need an omnichannel customer service strategy that works for you. It’s a combination of selecting the right tool, followed by agent training and setting KPIs for each platform. Let’s see what each of these entails.

The Right Tool: Omnichannel customer support starts and ends with a quality CRM system. Yes, there are other moving parts in this equation, but you need a tool that can handle multiple platforms, record customer interactions, and make it easy for your agents to look up on command. Tools like ZenDesk, Salesforce, and Genysys are market leaders in this field.
Train your Team: Train your team to handle multiple communication channels. They should know when a certain channel has hit its limit, and they need to switch channels. For example, a social thread should switch to a chat when personal information is required. If text is not the best medium for a conversation, then they should know how and when to transition to a phone call.
Channel Consistency: Push to have a consistent brand voice and experience across all channels. This includes standardized messaging and workflows across all channels. There should also be time limits on response rates to ensure that the customer doesn’t get frustrated.
Gather and Implement Feedback: Regularly collect feedback from your customers to see the success rate of your agents and your omnichannel customer support strategy as a whole. Invest time and resources to make sure all channels and teams are working at full efficiency.

Common Challenges

When managing multiple channels, you will run into issues. Be prepared for these and make sure that you have a plan in place for this.

Channel Silos: There may be certain channels that are utilized more than others, this may shift your focus on the one that’s utilized the most, often at the cost of other channels. A centralized CRM will mitigate this to a certain extent, but it’s up to you to hold up service quality.
Technology Integration: Integrating multiple tools and platforms into a CRM can be complex and time-intensive. Make sure to budget time for such changes and have a fallback strategy in the meantime. As an enterprise, you can also ask for advice from your CRM partner on how to mitigate this.
Agent Fatigue: Managing multiple channels can cause agent fatigue as they can quickly get overwhelmed by the sheer number of incoming tickets. Make sure that you are managing your workforce effectively, and training your agents on how to handle overflows.

Optimizing Omnichannel Support

Use AI and Automation: If you are using a good CRM tool, you already need to create automation as part of the setup. Additionally, set up AI chatbots for text-based interactions, and voice agents like Phonely for phone support. These AI agents can help customers with self-serve options, and also redirect them to an agent using smart routing. This ensures that a customer query always goes to the agent, most qualified to resolve it. We don’t want billing queries to end with tech support, now do we?
Monitor Key Metrics: Stay on top of key metrics to measure the performance of each channel. This means looking for response times, resolution rates, and overall customer satisfaction. See if agent training or added resources can resolve some of the bottlenecks.
Proactive Support: With access to large amounts of customer data, see what issues are regularly cropping up and proactively resolve them for your customers. Additionally, see what customer preferences look like, and use this to make interactions even more seamless. An example would be a set of predefined text bubbles that include common support requests, so the customer doesn’t have to type it in.
Continuous Improvement: Customer expectations are always growing. And while you can use the best tools on the market, there is no room for complacency in customer support. To keep satisfaction levels high and to improve brand loyalty, you need to be customer-focused. See how you can do better. The more the brand cares, the better it fairs!

Conclusion

Omnichannel support is the new norm. Businesses need to be customer-obsessed to make a dent and win a customer’s loyalty. Omnichannel support allows businesses to do just that. By providing consistent support across all communication channels, a business shows that it cares. This helps build stronger relationships and win brand loyalty. There are also operational and competitive benefits to pursuing omnichannel support. These include better agent efficiency, and higher resolution rates just to name a few. Whether you’re in banking, healthcare, retail, or any other industry, implementing an effective omnichannel strategy is important for long-term success.