Everything You Need to Know About Omnichannel Solutions

Understanding the customers should be your top priority, and it’s only possible when the interactions are uniform over chat, email or call.

Omnichannel solutions play a significant role by integrating customer service touchpoints and channels. In this blog post, we discuss all things you need to know about omnichannel solutions including benefits, how it differs from multichannel support, elements and challenges.

What is Omnichannel Customer Service?

Omnichannel customer service creates connected and uniform customer interactions across channels, like chat, call, email, and social media. This means customers can continue their conversations in different channels with continued context. 

For example, a customer contacts support via a chatbot and the issue is escalated and connected to to a live agent via call. The customer won’t have to repeat the problem, as the agent will receive all the relevant contexts, making customer service prompt and satisfactory.

Benefits of Omnichannel Solutions

Omnichannel software solutions offer the following benefits:

1. Improved Customer Loyalty

Omnichannel software solutions provide speed, convenience and transparency for seamless customer interactions, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2. Better Customer Experience

The customers can switch between channels without losing context or repeating information, which creates a more convenient experience. Therefore, businesses can personalize support and resolve issues faster, improving overall customer experience.

3. Easy Implementation of New Channels

Businesses can get a competitive advantage in designing and implementing new channels through omnichannel solutions. This is because they already have established omnichannels that can act as a framework for introducing new channels. Businesses can learn from previous interactions without starting from scratch.

4. Better Insights Into Customer Behavior

Businesses can collect and analyze customer data like behaviors, values, and preferences in a single place. This allows for a better understanding of how customers interact with your business and how their needs may vary between channels. These insights can be used to identify weak areas in the customer journey and develop strategies to improve them.

Omnichannel Vs. Multichannel Customer Support

Even if multichannel and omnichannel customer service are often used interchangeably, they’re different. Here’s how they differ:

Mediums of Omnichannel Customer Support

Omnichannel customer service involves multiple channels to make seamless interaction possible. Some of them are mentioned below:

1. Live Chat

Live chat allows real-time interaction between agents and customers through a web or app interface. Agents can also juggle between multiple chats and use co-browsing to view and control the customer’s screen. This enables agents to respond to complex issues more quickly and efficiently.

2. Chatbots

Chatbots are software that offers human-like responses to handle customer inquiries. They can instantly solve common inquiries and help customers connect to the right agent or department.

Modern chatbots, powered by artificial intelligence, offer a more powerful support system by analyzing queries and responding to them using existing knowledge bases.

3. Social Media

Social media is an excellent platform for responding to customers’ queries, complaints, and comments and cultivating a positive brand image.

Frustrated customers often take to social media to voice their disappointments and concerns. Remember to maintain a professional, empathetic tone and address customer issues directly. You can offer solutions or mention the following steps to address a problem. Consistent engagement can improve overall customer satisfaction and foster brand loyalty.

4. Email

Email allows businesses to respond to customer concerns promptly. You can also use pre-written email templates for common queries that can be personalized. This can save a lot of time and resources.

5. Voice & Video Support

With voice and video support, customers can talk directly with support agents in real time. This allows agents to attentively listen to the customers and understand their needs before suggesting a solution. It is an excellent tool for handling complex queries or sensitive issues requiring clarity and empathy.

6. Self-Service Options

Through self-service options, customers can resolve queries independently at any time. This helps support agents to focus on solving more complex issues. Common examples include knowledge bases containing documentation, how-to guides, troubleshooting instructions, and more.

7. Support Forums or Customer Communities

Forums and communities allow customers to ask questions and connect with other users. Users discuss features, updates and more about your product or service and answer each other’s queries. This also increases the likelihood of users becoming advocates for your brand and requires minimal effort.

How to Create an Omnichannel Customer Service Strategy?

Creating an omnichannel customer service strategy involves these vital steps to ensure a seamless and consistent customer experience across all communication platforms:

1. Understand Your Customers’ Preferences & Expectations

Identify your customers’ preferred channels, such as social media, email, live chat or phone, and integrate those into your strategy. Also, pay close attention to understanding customer expectations to increase loyalty and revenue growth.

2. Focus on Mobile Accessibility

Mobile accessibility is crucial in customer service strategy to maximize engagement and satisfaction. Because of increasing mobile users, it’s also crucial to optimize your customer service for mobile users, which can significantly improve conversion rates.

3. Map Out Customer Journey

You can understand each touchpoint where your customers interact with your business in the following way:

• Define customer personas by identifying key customer segments, their needs, and behaviors
• List all the touchpoints where customers interact with your brand, such as email, social media or website visits
• Outline the ideal customer experience and outcomes you want for each customer journey
• Integrate across channels to provide a cohesive and unified experience
• Continuously gather feedback from customers through surveys, reviews, or direct feedback

4. Ensure Customer Data Security

Your customer support strategy should include strong security measures to protect customer data. This is important, especially if you’re into the banking or financial industry. Some essential components include authentication processes, encryption methods, and compliance with data protection regulations.

5. Choose the Right Omnichannel Software

The most important thing is to choose the right omnichannel solution provider that offers:

• Scalability to grow with your business when you plan to add more channels or expand your customer base
• AI-powered features such as chatbots, automated routing, and speech analytics to handle simple queries and reduce agent workload
• Integration with current systems such as CRM platforms, help desk, or business analytics software
• Robust reporting and analytics features such as response time, customer satisfaction, and agent performance

Omnichannel Contact Center Best Practices

Some of the best practices for omnichannel customer service include:

1. Optimize Workflows With AI & Automation

Using AI and automation, businesses can streamline routine tasks, improve response times and enhance customer experience by providing faster resolutions. 

Here are some of the best ways:

• Automate repetitive tasks through AI-powered bots that can handle common queries like order status, FAQs and appointment
• Intelligent routing to analyze customer data and match queries to the most suitable agent
• Automated follow-ups to send post-interaction follow-up emails, satisfaction surveys or updates on ticket progress

2. Improve Internal & External Knowledge Bases

Maintaining comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge bases empowers customers to resolve issues independently. It also provides agents with the correct information for faster and more accurate support. This is how:

• Regularly update both the internal and external knowledge bases to reflect the latest product changes, policy updates, and common issues
• Build a user-friendly self-service portal or knowledge base that helps customers find solutions independently
• Gather feedback from agents and customers to improve the quality and clarity of content

3. Determine Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Clear SLAs establish customer and support team expectations regarding response times and service quality. This is how you can craft SLAs:

• Establish channel-specific SLAs, such as 24 hours for email responses and 5 minutes for live chats
• Use performance tracking tools to monitor if SLAs are being met
• Communicate SLAs to customers to manage expectations and avoid dissatisfaction due to delays

Biggest Omnichannel Support Challenges

Despite numerous benefits, omnichannel solutions are not free of challenges:

1. Data Integration

Coordinating customer data across multiple platforms can be challenging, especially when using disparate systems. This can lead to inconsistent customer experiences.

However, this issue can be managed using Exotel, which integrates with your favourite CRM tools and other applications to increase productivity and improve customer experience.

2. Maintaining Consistency and Service Quality

It can be tricky to deliver consistent service quality across channels as the response times can differ between channels while customers may have different expectations. This can result in an inconsistent brand image.

3. Scaling with Growing Customer Demands

Scaling your omnichannel contact center requires more resources, such as agents and technology, while maintaining service quality. The costs of upgrading systems and processes are challenging for omnichannel success.

Creating Omnichannel Experiences with Exotel

Omnichannel solutions allow your team and customers to work consistently across all communication channels. Adopting a robust and cohesive solution like Exotel can help you meet customer expectations and improve efficiency.

Exotel is a cloud-based omnichannel solution that helps businesses seamlessly integrate channels, scale effectively and accurately manage customer issues. It offers a feature-rich system with IVR greetings, call routing, call recording and more. You can request a demo now to know more about how it can help your business.

FAQs

1. What is an Omnichannel Solution?

An omnichannel solution integrates multiple channels, such as phone, email, live chat, and social media, into a seamless, unified experience.

2. How can Businesses Measure the Success of their Omnichannel strategy?

You can measure the success of your omnichannel strategy by tracking KPIs and metrics like:

• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) 
• Ticket volume
• Next issue avoidance
• Agent touches
• Ticket reopens
• Resolution times
• Customer effort score (CES)