Introduction
Customers nowadays do not expect to contact their favorite brand through a single customer communication channel. Having multiple communication channels is the new norm of the business that eases the customers to choose their preferred ones. It includes several digital channels such as email, live chat, social media, and traditional ones such as voice calls and SMS.
However, to maintain a connection between all the channels, a company must have to embrace an omnichannel customer experience that will help them to provide seamless customer service to each of the customers across all the communication channels. Offering omnichannel customer experience can be challenging but eventually, it will help in providing customer delight thus retaining more customers.
Ways to Offer Exceptional Omnichannel Customer Experience
In today’s world, customers are using multiple communication channels to connect with their preferred brands. The best way to meet customer’s expectations and stay relevant is to create an omnichannel strategy. In order to deliver a seamless omnichannel customer experience, brands need to follow certain steps that will help in increased sales and enhanced customer retention. From monitoring customer metrics to aligning all the channels, following the steps will help the brand in creating a successful one.
1. Identify Preferred Touchpoints
Brands must identify the preferred touchpoints while building ideal customer profiles that will highlight the online and offline channels where the customers spend most of their time. Once the touchpoints are identified, the next step should be figuring out what specific experiences such as marketing, customer support, sales, etc. should be provided by each touchpoint and which kind of technologies will enable the whole process.
Always make sure that all the channels are connected so that you can enhance the omnichannel customer experience if they use multiple channels for solving an issue. Finding the most preferred customer channel is important and at what stage of the customer journey they are using for brand interaction. It is essential to make a note of the customer preference so that you can reach that customer through their preferred channels whenever required.
2. Invest in Right Omnichannel Tools
Investing in the right technology should be done in such a way that it will help the customers in getting the proper information related to any product at their preferred time and selected mode of communication channels. Depending on the nature of your brand, customers, and what kind of experience they want from you, a brand should invest in that particular technology serving an omnichannel customer experience.
Whether you need an augmented reality or a live chat embedded in your website, it depends on how your customers want a response from your side. Else you can invest in the site’s search functionality of the website or in the extensive knowledge base that will help the customers in finding more relevant information.
3. Personalization Across the Channels
Despite the brands striving to personalize their customer experiences across all customer communication channels, most of them find it challenging in finding the right technologies to personalize the omnichannel customer experience. The whole process of personalization can be done when you know the area of personalization, what information you deliver for making an individualized omnichannel customer experience, and how you can make use of the proper technology while delivering a customer personalized shopping experience.
It requires proper research of every customer journey and detailed research of their profile so that you can get the proper information that can be used using the right tools and technologies across all the communication channels using an omnichannel strategy.
4. Enhance Mobile Experience
Nowadays more than half of the website traffic comes from mobile devices. Having a responsive website or an app is very important for serving omnichannel customer experience. Google Research says that more than 71% of the customers think mobile devices are an essential part of their purchasing experience. With the right mobile app, your customers can switch easily between online to offline channels.
If your customers do not get a seamless user experience while shopping through mobile, then there is a chance that your brand might lose sales and eventually customers. More than 45% of your customers prefer a combination of mobile, online, and in-store shopping while others prefer that your website should be user-friendly.
5. Track Customer Experience Metrics
To provide a seamless omnichannel customer experience, a brand must measure its customer experience metrics otherwise the quality and quantity can’t be improved timely. There are a couple of metrics that most successful brands use such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), Net Promoter Score (NPS), First Contact Resolution (FCR), Average Resolution Time (ART), Customer Referral Rate, Customer Retention Rate, Monthly Active Users (MAU), Customer Churn Rate (CCR), etc. that will help in capturing the important KPIs for monitoring. By using all the measuring metrics, you can track the customer journey and eventually help in providing a seamless customer experience.
6. Map Customer Journey
After understanding the audience and what communication platforms they are using for interaction, the customer journey they are taking for purchasing a product should be mapped. With the help of the customer journey map, the areas can be highlighted where the omnichannel experience can be enhanced.
You can check about the reasons for cart abandonment, or customers who are not completing the purchasing stage, etc. A solution can be installed based on the nature of the causes and enhance omnichannel customer experience where the customers get help in real-time and complete the whole purchase easily.
7. Sync Data with The CRM
It is quite evident that most of the customers expect a seamless omnichannel customer experience across all the communication channels. Based on their preferences, conversation, and buying history, a brand can easily figure out the buying pattern that will help them in serving customers in a better way. By synchronizing data with the CRM, brands can easily get customer interaction from all the communication channels so that they can solve the issues efficiently and in time.
To maintain consistency while collating data across all the channels, sometimes brands face challenges that can be recovered by standardizing the data across all the communication platforms and the CRM. With the implementation of various omnichannel messengers, you can sync the conversations from other platforms with the CRM.
Omnichannel Customer Experience – Pillar of Success
For an effective omnichannel strategy to work across all the communication channels, it is essential to understand your consumers and their requirements. Not only all your customers will prefer the same communication channel to interact with you, but also they will expect that their favorite brand should collect all their data across all the channels as they can approach multiple channels through different channels. While implementing, omnichannel customer strategy in place, your brand will respond to customers faster while fulfilling their needs at any point of the customer journey. It will eventually help your brand in improving customer loyalty, boosting revenue, and enhanced customer satisfaction.
