Omnichannel Customer Service: What It Is, Benefits & Strategy

Have you ever stumbled upon the word “omnichannel customer service”? While many second-guess its meaning, only a few research whether it’s something their business can adopt or not.

In simple terms, it deals with providing a unified customer service experience across all support channels. Seems simple in theory, right?

Research from Forrester reveals that creating a personalized and cohesive omnichannel customer experience is one of the most challenging CX tasks.

Another report by Incisiv states that 79% of customers think only marketing messages are personalized, and not service. Additionally, 75% of customers feel frustrated with the inconsistent information they received.

This highlights a huge gap in delivering better, personalized customer service, a golden opportunity for brands to differentiate themselves from the rest. However, your success with omnichannel customer service will solely rely on how you understand and use it.

What is Omnichannel Customer Service?

Omnichannel customer service is a CX strategy to offer consistent, connected service experiences. It’s a channel-fluid, meaning customers receive the same experience across different channels.

The omnichannel approach is relatively young and dates back to the early 2000s and 2010s. Frost & Sullivan, an American business consulting firm, defines it as “seamless and effortless, high-quality customer experiences that occur within and between contact channels.”

Omni means ‘all/every’ in Latin, and in the context of customer service, it encompasses all the parts of the communication through all channels. The growth of digital channels in the recent era has enabled customers to use their desired channel anytime, from anywhere to contact the brand’s support team.

Customers today can interact with brands through chatbots, SMS, email, social media, and other channels instantly. For example, the conversation started through Twitter or Instagram can continue via email, and may end with a call.

The omnichannel communication for customer service eliminates the need to explain the issues over and over again while switching channels. This ensures that they receive a consistent, connected, and seamless experience across channels, providing excellent customer service.

Omnichannel vs Multichannel Customer Service

While there’s the duality of it, it makes you wonder the differences between omnichannel and multichannel if both include multiple channels? And which one’s best for your business? Let’s find out:

Multichannel Customer Service

Multichannel is all about being present on every channel. In this CX strategy, customers have multiple channels at their disposal to reach your support team. However, the only drawback is that the communication history and context of the service is not available with agents handling different channels, making it challenging to manage customer inquiries efficiently.

Simply put, customers can receive support through the channel they used for raising a service request. But if they plan to use a different channel for the same issue, they’d have to repeat the problem to the agent.

Omnichannel Customer Service

As explained earlier, this CX strategy involves providing a unified, consistent experience across different service channels. Here, the communication history and context of the service requests are available to customer service agents across channels for personalized support.

For instance, your support team can contact customers through email or voice call for a service request raised from social media. The context and the conversation history are preserved so that customers don’t have to repeat their information.

This helps attain the true omnichannel experience that enables teams to streamlined chatbot that enhances offer streamlined customer support.

Omnichannel vs Multichannel Customer Service: Key Differences

Here are some key differentiating factors that separate omnichannel from multichannel customer service approach:

Multichannel service isn’t wrong for your business as it allows you to connect with customers on various channels. However, research says that customers expect more personalized service experiences from brands than what they are already getting.

Consumers today can define their own journey across different touchpoints, and forcing them to stick to one channel might negatively impact their experience. Modern consumers don’t see brands as siloed entities and expect to receive information in real-time.

Thus, omnichannel has given rise to unified customer experiences, which makes it a more sustainable and effective approach in the long run.

Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Service

Omnichannel customer service strategy opens doorways for a wide range of benefits to transform your business. Let’s have a look:

Improved Customer Satisfaction

Research has found that repeating themselves multiple times is the biggest frustration for 73% of consumers. Additionally, 86% expect conversations to seamlessly move between channels.

Think about explaining the issue to a bot first, then to a support agent handling social media or email channels, and then doing the same to an executive on the phone call. Sounds frustrating already, doesn’t it? Well, that won’t happen with omnichannel.

Here, customers receive consistent, personalized service across channels, which helps boost their satisfaction levels. Omnichannel communication for customer service ensures that customers feel heard, satisfied, and listened to, regardless of the channel they used, which ultimately helps increase customer satisfaction.

Enhanced Personalized

As discussed, the omnichannel approach is all about personalizing your interaction with customers. For 79% of the customers, personalized service is more important than personalized marketing.

Using the right omnichannel customer service platforms, you can enable your agents to provide a cohesive experience. Whether the customer has used live chat, social media, email, or a different channel, they’ll receive personalized responses, leading to enhanced personalized customer experiences.

Improved Team Productivity and Reduced Costs

The ability to provide quick and efficient customer service across channels makes your agents’ jobs effortless. Since customers don’t have to repeat their issues, support agents can directly get to the solution.

Additionally, they can answer simple queries instantly with live chats or FAQs, which saves them time to handle more complex issues. This can further increase their productivity and job satisfaction with their jobs of helping solve customer problems.

Moreover, omnichannel is a more cost-effective strategy than traditional methods. Using the right omnichannel customer service software, companies can streamline their operations and take the burden off agents’ shoulders.

Higher Retention and Loyalty

Omnichannel customer service offers convenience to customers and instills trust in your brand to show that you follow a consumer-first approach.

By meeting your customers’ expectations effectively, you can drive a higher retention rate and build loyalty and advocacy for your brand. 84% of the customers have reported going out of their way to spend more with a brand after a great experience.

Additionally, companies that inculcate omnichannel strategies retain a whopping 89% of their customers against 33% who don’t. This demonstrates that a seamless, omnichannel experience can influence your customers’ loyalty greatly, ultimately fostering enduring brand loyalty.

Better Insights Through Centralized Data

While you can get insights from each channel individually, data insights from omnichannel become interesting. It centralizes your customer data to get consolidated insights from all the channels combined, providing greater customer insights.

For instance, channels like social media, live chat, emails, and others leave a trace of customer interaction with your agents. This enables you to analyze data in a broader context to understand how your customers’ needs vary and the most popular channels they use.

You can also discover insights about what channels are used for what type of queries, the revenue they help to generate, and satisfaction across those channels. Businesses can also get deeper insights on their support team’s and agents’ individual performance to optimize their strategy.

How to Build an Effective Omnichannel Customer Service Strategy

Creating an omnichannel customer service strategy is not about being everywhere — it’s about being connected, consistent, and putting your customers first. Let’s see how you can build an effective omnichannel strategy:

1. Understand Your Customer Journey

Before you select service channels and platforms, it’s crucial to understand the customers’ journey with your brand. Map their journey to identify all the potential pathways they may take from the first touchpoint to resolution.

You also want to understand how customers interact with your brand and what channels they use. Whether they use social media, email, or any other mode, and at what point do they need support? By understanding your customers’ journey with your brand, you can design an effective service experience that meets their expectations by considering the entire customer journey.

2. Choose the Right Channels for Your Audience

It’s tempting to include all the channels available, but it does not make sense to integrate a channel that your customers occasionally or hardly use. Instead, focus on the channels that customers frequently use to engage and seek help from brands through their preferred channels.

For instance, integrate live chat, email, and messaging apps like WhatsApp or Instagram into your omnichannel customer service platform. Many customers still prefer talking to an agent on the phone for complex issues.

By selecting the right mix of channels, you can ensure that your team can manage service interactions effectively.

3. Integrate Customer Data and Communication Tools

A true omnichannel customer service strategy helps your support team connect the dots behind the scenes. That’s where your tech stack and tools like CRM, help desk software, etc., can come in handy.

Your customer service software should enable you to integrate CRM and communication channels to centralize the whole process. This further enables your team to streamline the support by accessing the customers’ data and past conversation history.

Moreover, you can analyze the performance of each communication channel and offer faster, more relevant resolutions by having comprehensive customer information accessible to employees.

4. Train Your Support Team

Even with the right tools and customer data, your service will be as strong as your team. The omnichannel approach often requires training your team to bring a shift in the mindset to become channel-fluid and data-savvy.

Provide necessary resources and training sessions for agents to navigate different channels and use the data for effective support communications. Also, train agents to communicate with empathy, clarity, and consistency across channels.

By investing in your agents’ training, you can help them adapt to new-age service tools and meet customer expectations. Effective support teams are crucial in delivering immediate and seamless customer support as well as managing customer queries more efficiently.

5. Use AI and Automation Wisely

The AI and automation are not going to replace human agents, but support them to make the customers’ service journey smoother. You can use these tools strategically to route support tickets to the right agent for better handling of support requests.

Additionally, you can deploy AI-powered chatbots to manage repetitive queries and automate follow-up, feedback collection, and status changes. However, don’t go overboard with it as customers still crave for human connection and emotional touch.

The only way of staying true to your customers’ expectations is striking a balance between automation and humans for speed and empathy. Integrating self service channels within your strategy can enhance customer experience by allowing buyers to complete purchases independently, enabling your team to focus on larger accounts.

Omnichannel Customer Service Examples

Now that you have understood how to effectively build an omnichannel service strategy, let’s look at some companies that have already done so successfully:

1. Chewy

Chewy is an online store for pet food supplies and other products, and its customer service experiences speak volumes. They personalize each interaction with their customers and often go the extra mile to deliver that experience consistently by effectively managing customer touchpoints.

2. Honda

Honda wanted to engage with their tech-savvy buyers from different generations who proactively use different channels for their car sales website. They chose a unified omnichannel customer service software to manage this need seamlessly.

After the implementation, the company saw a drastic reduction in costs while improving its customer service experience. Their support team is now effortlessly engaging with customers through multiple communication channels such as email, social media, live chat, and voice calls for all-around care.

3. FerryScanner

Another omnichannel customer service example is from FerryScanner, a platform to search and book affordable tickets for ferry rides in Greece and other countries. What seals the deal for the company is its approach to customer service.

They have integrated support for Facebook, live chat, WhatsApp, email, and even responding to Google reviews. They have a trained and fully equipped support team to provide their customers with the best experience they can by unifying customer conversations across these channels.

Conclusion

Omnichannel customer service isn’t just a new buzzword that will fade away with time. It’s a powerful strategy that puts your customers at the heart of every interaction. By delivering unified, personalized, and connected support through their preferred channel, you can improve their experience, boost loyalty, and increase the retention rate.

As we look to the future, AI and automation technologies are reshaping how businesses deliver customer service. It’s critical for brands to use these tools to automate routine queries, provide real-time support, and offer data-driven personalization tailored to each customer.

Also, the conversation commerce is on the rise, allowing customers to ask questions and get responses while they shop online or in-store. This presents an opportunity to build or upgrade your current customer service setup. Follow the steps listed in this article to build an effective omnichannel customer service strategy to future-proof your business.

So, let’s build your omnichannel success story today by focusing on creating a seamless omnichannel customer experience.