Customers today have more choices than ever when communicating with companies and customer service providers. They can choose from various channels, such as voice, webchat, message, email, social media, etc. So, you need an omnichannel customer experience (CX) strategy to meet these expectations.
Omnichannel CX focuses on providing seamless, consistent CX across any channel the customer chooses to contact you. It is about ensuring they receive the same positive experience with your brand regardless of how they engage.
You must consider the following points to execute your omnichannel CX strategy successfully:
1. Understand the customer journey
By understanding how customers interact with your brand across channels, you can design a strategy that meets their needs and expectations at every touchpoint. What steps do customers take as they interact with your brand? What are their needs and expectations at each stage?
It is important to understand the different touchpoints that customers use to interact with your brand and the role that each touchpoint plays in the customer journey. Understanding this helps you identify points of friction that customers may experience and the opportunities available to provide a better experience.
Once you have identified the customer journey, you can develop an omnichannel CX strategy that considers these.
2. Develop your touchpoints
Customer service channels, such as phone, email, live chat, and social media, should be integrated into the omnichannel ecosystem to provide customers with multiple options to get the help they need. Your customers should be able to switch between touchpoints without losing their place in the journey.
The touchpoints you develop will depend on what your customers leverage the most. For example, a chatbot on your website might make the most sense for your customers if you see a lot of activity on your FAQs page.
You must also consider how emerging technology, such as AI and chatbots, enhances CX. Automation can speed up response times and improve customer service delivery. However, you must also ensure that customers still have the option to speak to a real person if they wish.
All these components should be integrated and work together seamlessly. For example, if a customer starts a chat on the brand’s website, they should be able to continue that chat on their mobile app or via phone and vice versa. This level of integration and consistency is key to delivering a positive omnichannel experience and building customer loyalty.
3. Personalising the customer experience
Personalising CX is a key aspect of creating a successful omnichannel CX strategy. Personalisation creates more meaningful and relevant CX, increasing customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty.
Here’s how you can personalise CX with an omnichannel strategy:
- Use customer data: A single view of the customer allows you to understand customer preferences, needs and behaviour in-depth. When a customer contacts your company, your staff will have all the necessary information to provide an effective and personalised experience. For example, if the customer has previously had issues with their product, staff will have access to information related to this issue so they can resolve it quickly.
- Integrate customer data across channels: By combining insights from different sources and channels, your contact centre can build more comprehensive customer profiles that enable you to deliver a tailored experience. An omnichannel approach to CX enables your contact centre to provide proactive support, suggest relevant products and services, and create a seamless journey across all touchpoints.
- Personalise interactions: By using customer data, staff can personalise interactions with customers, such as addressing customers by name, providing relevant offers and recommendations, and offering support tailored to their needs and preferences.
4. Select the right tools
Customer service providers need an integrated system that allows staff to track and manage customer interactions across all channels. Such a system enables your staff to handle interactions with multiple customers and provide consistent service no matter how the customer reaches out. The tools should be user-friendly and easy for staff to use when delivering a positive customer experience.
You should also consider evaluating potential tools thoroughly to ensure they suit the omnichannel CX strategy. Your approach might include conducting a pilot test with a small group of staff, evaluating the ROI of the tools, and seeking feedback from customers and staff.
5. Continuously monitor the success of your solution
Continually monitoring and evaluating your omnichannel CX strategy is crucial for customer service providers to ensure success and achieve desired outcomes. Here are some of the reasons why you must continuously monitor the omnichannel CX strategy:
- Identifying areas for improvement: Continuous monitoring can help you identify areas for improvement in the omnichannel CX strategy, such as areas where customer satisfaction is low or channels that do not effectively meet customer needs.
- Adapting to changing customer needs: Customers’ needs and preferences can change over time. Continuous monitoring means you can identify these changes and adapt the omnichannel strategy to meet new customer expectations.
- Ensuring alignment with business goals: Continuous monitoring will help you align your strategy with the broader business goals and objectives as these change.
To effectively monitor the omnichannel CX strategy, you should leverage various metrics and KPIs, such as customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty metrics, as well as data from customer feedback, surveys, and analytics tools.
Why choose Premier Contact Point for Business?
Customer service has become the differentiator that distinguishes you from your competitors. You need to drive strong connections with your customers across voice and digital channels to elevate CX, build your brand and grow your business.
With Contact Point, your customers can easily move through their channel of choice, including chatbots, instant messaging, email and voice.
If exceptional customer service is important to your business, Premier Contact Point can help create meaningful and memorable experiences. Visit our Premier Contact Point for Business page for more on our platform.