Omnichannel Customer Service: Tips and Best Practices

Customers worldwide expect an Amazon-like experience when shopping. As your company starts to grow, it is essential to remain competitive. One of the marketing solutions that businesses use to beat competitors is to join the trends dominating the entire industry, and that includes omnichannel strategy. It benefits both businesses and their target market.

This article will help you to identify what are the methods and best practices in omnichannel customer service.
To start off, it is capable of providing fully integrated online purchasing for your end-users. Most companies can support communication channels designed for lead and buyer engagement through web, voice, and emails. The challenge is to maintain all these contact points continuously, simultaneously, and fluidly. But, what exactly is omnichannel for customer service, and how can it be applied to your business?

What Is Omnichannel Customer Service

In a nutshell, it refers to a network of interactive mediums that seamlessly bridges the channels you are using to interact with target buyers so that the latter can connect with your business with ease. It means that your leads and existing end-users can engage with you through any media or devices of their preference.

A company providing omnichannel customer service allows their users to establish contact through one channel and quickly move to another support agent without explaining their concern about the brand or the products they wish to buy.

To make things more straightforward for you, check out these omnichannel customer service examples:

Let's say you want to order frappe from a coffee shop. Instead of going to the shop's location to wait for your order, all you have to do is to order it through their mobile app, website, or social media page. Omnichannel allows individuals to order, pay, collect points, and track their purchases through devices and in-store interactions.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel Customer Service

Multichannel and Omnichannel provide varying structures of end-user assistance. In the former, the buyer has access to a variety of communication choices that are not interconnected. It means your help desk representatives can help customers using at least two communication channels. While in the latter, you are everywhere. This enables customers to connect continuously between these channels without encountering any repetition.

How to Achieve Omnichannel Customer Service

Nowadays, people consider their smartphones as a way to do basically anything. Also, they use it as their personalized shopping store. People are always looking for the most convenient ways they can purchase from a shop or company using digital means. 
If you want proactive and efficient business operations, omnichannel customer service solutions are one of the keys to doing that.

Mobile friendly services

Omnichannel should expect that people always jump from one screen to another, from their smartphones to their laptops, and vice versa. To accommodate their fickle choice of purchasing device, your site must be performing well, just like any other big screen, as you wouldn't want customers to get annoyed. Omnichannel provides accessibility on mobile devices just like in computers, along with seamless connectivity across different technologies used to stay connected.

SMS marketing

Marketers and online sellers have adopted SMS service as a primary route in their omnichannel solutions. SMS has been a great channel to deliver messages promptly. If you have promotions, SMS can guarantee that your intended audiences can scan them. It is considered a unique marketing channel as it does not require internet connection to work.

How do you carry this out in your existing B2C contact processes? For instance, once you acquire your customers’ contact details and personal info such as their name and date of birth, arrange a personalized message and special reward or promo on their birthday. It should look something akin to this: 

Hi, Abigail, happy birthday from Shopify! Here's to a year full of discoveries — use BDAY12 for 20% off our site: shopify.me.lc/bcspc.

Social media services

Social media services play an important role in businesses. Aside from functioning as a way for users to keep in touch with family and friends, it has also become a common ground where the audiences gather, conduct research, connect, and even order products or services. For an excellent omnichannel experience, your social media platforms need to be continuously integrated, as consistent social media presence can increase customer engagement.

Live chat services

You can implement live chat services in any marketing strategy, but it mainly works well with omnichannel marketing solutions. Your buyers' negative comments can damage your brand in a matter of seconds; that's why it is essential to provide the quickest support possible. The longer the average waiting time on your site, the more it could lead potential customers away. With live or instant messaging, you can cater to your customers' needs immediately. 

Live chat typically addresses queries in real-time more often than other digital forms of user assistance mechanisms. It is a significant part of an omnichannel strategy because it is all about highly relevant customer experience. Several approaches are available to implement it in your business, including the incorporation of automated chatbots. Chatbots are readily integrated in most online platforms, meaning it is not limited to a single channel. More importantly, they are perfect for handling repetitive questions and concerns about your products or services, thereby allowing your customer service team to focus on more serious user concerns.

Omnichannel Self-service

It is challenging to have customer support that serves customers in real-time while also being available 24/7. The ideal solution to this gap is to assimilate self-service methods into your omnichannel customer service strategy by creating a knowledge repository and capturing the best practices and know-how about your brand. 

There are various ways to implement self-service in your business. For example, a self-service portal (also called a self-service channel) is where the customers log in, monitor their complaints, and track the interactions they have had with your agent. Not every concern requires your full attention, especially when the answers are already available on your website. Other customers or site visitors prefer to seek the answers they need independently.

Email Marketing

Mostly, resort to emailing when reaching out to businesses. Email is known as one of the most established and stable customer means of initiating and maintaining long-term B2C and B2B relations. Combining omnichannel and email marketing pushes your company for stability and more surefire success. Brand promotion using this particular channel augments your omnipresence online by solidifying the initial connections you have built with newly acquired end-users and potential leads via live chat, SMS, or social media.

Businesses can use omnichannel support and email marketing to provide their customers an excellent experience. Separately, both sides stand firm on their own. Together, these methods dynamically assist site visitors, interested purchasers, along with those who have purchased or tried your services.

Conclusion

Business owners are using omnichannel customer service as the gold standard for success in their chosen industry. It has become the benchmark that every SME aspires to achieve. To be virtually present everywhere on frequently used contact platforms guarantees a progressive UX (user experience) and CX (customer experience) on any mobile device or location. New Media Services offers excellent customer service experience and drives business impressive results. Our company is here to help you  thrive. Unlock the capabilities and expertise of our company to deliver integrated services!