How do your customers get in touch with your company? Do they still use the traditional telephone? Email? Social media or chat functions?
Now that customers have numerous ways to reach companies at their fingertips, an omnichannel customer experience has become that much more important. This is also why an omnichannel customer experience is a must-have for any business in the modern digital world.
What is an omnichannel customer experience? When a company sells products, answers questions, or advertises products across multiple platforms that are interconnected, it is offering an omnichannel customer experience. Each interaction or touchpoint, whether it is through a phone call, email, social media communication, or SMS, is part of a single, seamless overall experience.
For example, a customer may first call a company over the phone with an issue. If they continue the communication through email and finish through SMS – seamlessly – that is an omnichannel customer approach. The main point of this experience is that it focuses entirely on the customer and the customer’s journey.
Regardless of what form of communication your customers use, they can be satisfied that they will be dealt with quickly, efficiently, and seamlessly through omnichannel customer experiences. Omnichannel customer experience is used in a variety of industries, from retail, healthcare, automotive, and financial industries and, yes, contact centers.
There are numerous benefits to building an omnichannel customer experience, but it isn’t easy. It takes quite a bit of manpower to make sure you have customer service agents available 24/7/365 on each and every communication platform. This is nearly impossible for small and medium-sized businesses to handle on a daily basis.
Therefore, companies have experienced the benefits of having one designated contact center that takes care of all the inquiries and follows up with customers through different means of communication. Once an omnichannel customer experience is in place, the benefits are clear:
Omnichannel call centers have a specific structure in which they answer calls quickly and route them to the necessary departments or assist customers on different topics by connecting them to relevant specialists. Whether a customer needs to be transferred to a salesforce, marketing team, or technical support, omnichannel call centers make sure it is done quickly and efficiently.
This structured process allows customers to have more choices in which to communicate with your company – more choices of platforms and more choices of who exactly they can talk to in order to get their questions and concerns answered.
Omnichannel contact centers run their operations smoothly because they have access to all of the data required to focus on the customer’s individual experiences.
By focusing on the customers’ needs and experiences – how they communicate, what they purchase, and the questions they ask – companies will have better retention rates and higher sales revenue.
Omnichannel contact centers regularly conduct quality monitoring and customer satisfaction reviews and make improvements based on results. For example, omnichannel contact centers will collect all of the relevant data analytics to track how your customers engage with your company across all communication channels.
This regular reviewing helps you gain a better understanding of your customer’s journey – where they engage most, what marketing campaigns are the most valuable, and where money is spent. All of this data is reviewed so that adjustments are made to focus on the customer’s journey best.
When you connect with your customers over a wide range of channels using omnichannel customer experience, you can cater to a broader audience. One way to do this is to use Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
IVR is a system that helps streamline your telephone answering system, while also providing your customers with personalized customer care. That way, your customers get the answers they need more efficiently and effectively.
For example, Ansafone has dynamic IVR systems that will quickly and efficiently answer your customers common questions, provide accessible self-service options, and offer short quick paths to route calls to the right person.
Have you ever called an automated system only to be routed – and re-routed – over and over again while never getting an answer from a real person? That is a poor IVR approach that will ultimately lose customers. IVR systems that work will resolve each customer concern quickly and efficiently.
IVR can also be used in tandem with an omnichannel approach to collect better data. Remember that IVR is needed to help your customers feel valued – they shouldn’t be waiting hours for live assistance or be rerouted to different automated systems. IVR systems like Ansafone’s IVR options can help in the omnichannel approach.
An omnichannel call center can use IVR to manage high call volumes any time of the day, give 24/7 availability, consistent brand support, and follow-up customer satisfaction surveys for better data. It also saves everyone time – the contact agents and the customers.
Collecting better data about your customers is key to a successful omnichannel customer experience. Not only will it help you better understand how your target audiences interact and engage with your company. It will also give you a better understanding of what products and services they prefer to help focus your marketing. In the end, this data will be the main force that drives your omnichannel customer experience.
You have probably heard the terms omnichannel and multichannel, but what is the difference? With multi-channel services, a customer has access to many options to contact the business, but they are not connected. Instead, they are focused upon one at a time. This means the customer might need to make several attempts in different services to get what they need because multichannel focuses on the channel, not the customer.
With an omnichannel approach, it takes the customer’s journey over multiple channels into account to make sure they have one seamless experience. Whereas a multichannel approach may offer multiple forms of channels – in store, email, social media, etc. – they are all viewed separately from one another.
Omnichannel, on the other hand, integrates all of these experiences seamlessly into one and is always focused on the customer. The customer’s overall journey is always first and foremost in the omnichannel customer experience.
If you are interested in creating a successful omnichannel customer experience, it is important it follows the right steps. Five tips are discussed below:
Thorough research of customers’ habits and preferences, you can create the right strategy. For example, an omnichannel contact center will analyze which services your customers prefer to use so that your company can better focus on how to market those services efficiently.
This is why both data collection and data analysis are so important with building a successful omnichannel customer experience. Yet, collecting your data is only the first step in this type of campaign – you also need an omnichannel contact center team who can analyze the data so that you know the best way to communicate with and serve your customers’ needs at any moment.
Since omnichannel campaigns are focused on one thing – the customer – it is important to identify the customer journey from beginning to end. You need to map the customer journey to see where service needs to be improved or where customers don’t convert. This includes evaluating what steps your customer takes to learn about your products or services, communicating with your agents, and finally purchasing a product.
Identifying your customers journey not only helps you better communicate with them, but also helps you create a better-targeted marketing campaign in the future.
You will want an omnichannel contact center that can systematically review your content in order to make it more user-friendly for your customers. Remember that the whole point of an omnichannel customer experience is to make sure they can seamlessly work with your company on all platforms. That means content may need to be adjusted to both mobile devices and computers so that your customers can use these platforms easily and efficiently.
A successful omnichannel customer experience system will implement different support services that can enhance the experience. For example, integrating different support services through chat-bots, web-calls, video-calls, texts, and email services will ensure your customers can be in direct contact with you 24/7/365. However, this is easier said than done.
If you don’t have the manpower to constantly monitor all of these support services, you can use contact center services like Ansafone’s email management support and IVR services for outside help that is available to your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and every day in the year.
Analyzing customer feedback is important to properly monitor quality control. It will also help reduce customer attrition and improve positive outcomes. Again, these services take time and effort, which means an omnichannel customer support team may be necessary to properly analyze customer feedback and react effectively.
By implementing an omnichannel customer experience, either in-house or through an omnichannel contact center, you will have no problem engaging customers, keeping them loyal, and marketing your company successfully now and in the future.
Using a successful omnichannel contact center can be key to making sure your customers can reach you through each and every digital platform they use
Ansafone Contact Centers is an award-winning BPO provider with 50 years of world-class customer experience and brand care. We are a national call center with omnichannel services, fully equipped to help you with your business and with any special circumstances.
Please request a quote or call 800-510-0514 to learn more about how you can benefit from outsourcing a call center and how we can improve your business. We’re happy to offer insight into what your customers seek from your company’s language offerings and tailored customer solutions.
