What is omnichannel customer service?
Embracing omnichannel for customer service is how your business can keep up with the demands of modern consumers. RingCentral RingCX is an omnichannel contact center solution that can help you get there.
Omnichannel customer service is no longer a “nice to have” for modern businesses. In today’s age of digital transformation, consumers expect—or even, demand— to be able to interact with businesses on a diverse range of devices and across multiple communication channels.
What’s more, they want to do so seamlessly and with as little effort on their part as possible. Business operations have adapted to meet these new and ever-evolving customer expectations, often times by adopting omnichannel strategies in the area of customer service.
What’s more, they want to do so seamlessly and with as little effort on their part as possible. Business operations have adapted to meet these new and ever-evolving customer expectations, often times by adopting omnichannel strategies in the area of customer service.
What is omnichannel customer service?
Omnichannel customer service is the provision of advice and guidance to customers seamlessly across multiple channels of communication. Any customer can seek and receive help on whichever channel or channels they desire, and can effortlessly continue customer service conversations on a new channel at a later point.
That element of effortlessness is crucial to the omnichannel customer service definition. With this approach, the channels used for customer service are integrated and work together as a holistic entity. If they’re segregated and siloed, then it’s not omnichannel customer service.
Omnichannel vs. multichannel customer service?
The main differences when it comes to multichannel vs omnichannel customer service are in the areas of channel integration and the impact that has on the customer experience.
As we mentioned, omnichannel is an approach that provides an integrated experience for the customer that’s consistent and personalized across all channels and devices. It’s a user-based approach that aims to make the experience as easy as possible by allowing customers to reach out to businesses on whichever channel or device is most convenient for them.
On the other hand, multichannel refers to an approach that utilizes various channels, but keeps each channel independent of the others. They have their own strategy and goals, often resulting in data silos.
Though both strategies focus on multiple channel customer experience, the key difference lies in the fact that a multichannel customer approach isn’t integrated. The experiences of customers who use more than one of the channels, therefore, are far from seamless, and often prove frustrating.
Omnichannel customer service examples and use cases
So, now you know how to define omnichannel customer service, but what does that really mean in practice? Often, the best way to really understand a new business tactic or approach is to think about how it applies in the real world. Here are a few hypothetical examples of omnichannel customer service that you might just recognize from your day-to-day life:
- Buy online, pickup in store (BOPIS) – Many modern retailers offer consumers the chance to make a purchase online and then pick it up in-store. It’s an example of omnichannel customer service as it involves at least two channels—an online store or app and an in-person store—working harmoniously. The customer can make the purchase when and where it suits them and then get the product without worrying about delivery or delivery charges.
- Financial services provision via different channels – Banks and other financial services firms now increasingly allow customers to perform some actions—like checking account balances and more—via text or chatbot. They also typically make it simple to escalate or switch an issue to a human agent when necessary, while ensuring that agent has the prior interaction at hand.
Why is omnichannel customer experience important?
In today’s digital world, customers rely on having diverse touchpoints with a brand during their customer journey. People often switch between traditional and digital channels while searching for products and expect a range of post-purchase support options that cater to their convenience.
Omnichannel customer experience is the outcome of a customer-focused approach through which a business provides a seamless, consistent, and personalized CX irrespective of the channel or device used to facilitate the interaction.
The omnichannel approach integrates customer service across:
Omnichannel customer experience is the outcome of a customer-focused approach through which a business provides a seamless, consistent, and personalized CX irrespective of the channel or device used to facilitate the interaction.
The omnichannel approach integrates customer service across:
- Desktop and mobile devices
- Online, in-store, and telephonic channels (including chatbots, self-service channels, virtual assistants, and customer service agents)
- Social media platforms.
In short, omnichannel customer service is vital as it’s the only way for businesses to remain present across different channels to ensure the customer’s experience and the service they receive is cohesive and consistent.
Benefits of omnichannel customer service
Omnichannel customer service benefits for businesses that implement it well—more on that later—are varied and impactful. Successful omnichannel customer service initiatives can:
Benefits of omnichannel customer service
Omnichannel customer service benefits for businesses that implement it well—more on that later—are varied and impactful. Successful omnichannel customer service initiatives can:
Enhance CX
Consistent and personalized support empowers the customer to engage online and offline at their convenience.
Streamline customer journeys
As well as delivering personalized support across multiple channels, an omnichannel approach provides better access to insights into customer lifecycles, making it simpler to make improvements.
Boost customer loyalty
A smooth, personalized service experience builds value and trust with customers, who will then be less likely to go elsewhere.
Strengthen brand recall
Ensuring customers receive a consistent brand experience across devices, channels, and platforms will create a more memorable impression. That strengthens brand recall and ensures customers view you in a more positive light—perhaps enough that they’ll become brand advocates.
Increase revenue
By improving customer loyalty and increasing brand awareness, you retain more customers and make future purchases more likely. As well as increasing the chances of existing customers extolling your virtues to others.
Assessing the maturity of your omnichannel customer service offering
Chances are, you’re not going to be starting completely from scratch in offering omnichannel customer service. The idea of omnichannel experiences has been around for a while, so you’ve probably already taken some steps in its direction. Before looking to build or refine a new omnichannel customer service strategy, then, you need to take stock of where you currently sit.
That means more than simply assessing which channels you currently use to provide customer service—although that is one fundamental element to begin with. What you really need to do is to get a sense of digital customer engagement within your client base. Just how engaged are customers with your service provision across channels? What overall impressions of your brand do those customers gain when seeking help across digital channels?
Chances are, if you offer disjointed customer service via siloed channels, engagement won’t be high and impressions will be poor. Try seeking support yourself on different channels and changing channels mid-way. Also, use surveys and other feedback mechanisms to gather customer opinion.
Once you’ve made this assessment of your omnichannel customer service maturity, you’ll be ready to implement a new and improved strategy.
How to implement a successful omnichannel customer service strategy
Being able to provide omnichannel customer service can bring real and noticeable benefits to your business. However, it’s not an easy thing to achieve and plenty of brands take missteps when starting out. If you don’t want that to be you, then here are some omnichannel customer service best practices to follow when building or refining your strategy:
The first step in grasping how to implement omnichannel customer service, is to appreciate how important it is to meet customers where they are. It’s critical for businesses to understand where their customers find information, shop, communicate, and seek help. You can do this by leveraging relevant data to find out the platforms on which your customers are most active. Consider questions such as:
Do they have an active online presence?
Which platforms do they use most often?
Do they go online to read reviews before making a purchase decision?
Answering these questions will help you understand which channels to engage your customers through. Armed with this information, you can build a customer interaction framework that allows you to pinpoint their wants and needs, identify customer preferences for service channels, and map their journey to ensure support is optimized and consistent.
Which platforms do they use most often?
Do they go online to read reviews before making a purchase decision?
Answering these questions will help you understand which channels to engage your customers through. Armed with this information, you can build a customer interaction framework that allows you to pinpoint their wants and needs, identify customer preferences for service channels, and map their journey to ensure support is optimized and consistent.
How to choose the right omnichannel customer service software
How to choose the right omnichannel customer service software
When it comes to choosing the right omnichannel customer service platform for your business, there are some important functions that will enable your support team to best address and prioritize every channel.
True omnichannel customer service solutions should feature:
- Features and functionality to easily manage all the communication channels that are important to your customers.
- A simple interface that combines customer context and data on one easy-to-use platform
- Quality management and workforce management tools for tracking agent performance and CX, to train and improve representatives
- Cloud architecture to increase flexibility, streamline operations, and store customer data safely and securely
- Contact center reporting and analytics to track performance across channels and teams, and improve customer satisfaction with personalized experiences
- Native integrations with your chosen CRM, other business-critical tools, and a unified communication platform for your internal collaboration.
- Open APIs that make scaling up or down simple and integrations that quickly adapt to new technologies as they become available
- Omnichannel for customer service pricing plans that are straightforward and easy to understand.
Taking an omnichannel approach to customer service enables businesses to meet their customers where they are. Being available to customers across a range of devices and channels enables support teams to deliver consistent support that’s tailored to an individual customer’s needs. When implemented successfully, omnichannel customer service solutions can help you enhance CX, boost brand loyalty, and drive sales with every interaction.
Omnichannel customer service FAQs
As mentioned, omnichannel customer service isn’t something you can provide without work. Some of the most common challenges businesses encounter include the complexity of managing multiple, interconnected channels and the issue of training staff to ably do so.
Fortunately, if you invest in a holistic omnichannel contact center solution like RingCentral RingCX it mitigates these challenges. The platform is designed to be easy to implement and intuitive for users.
Choosing the right software solution is crucial for successful omnichannel customer service provision. How much a given solution may cost will depend on the provider. RingCentral RingCX pricing is designed to be both easy-to-understand and predictable to help businesses keep costs under control.