Expectations of customers are constantly evolving as new and innovative channel solutions are becoming available in the market. Through traditional support channels like phone or a new channel such as social media, customers expect a consistent, quality experience. This is expected to become even more important in the coming years. As per a Walker study, customer service was posed to supplant price and product as a key brand differentiator by the end of 2020.
Trying to meet these expectations of customers is possible through delivering superior experience across all channels by employing industry-specific knowledge and expertise.
Successful companies are always going out of their way, looking for the ways in which then can improve the overall customer experience. At this time all indications have found that omnichannel is important for customer experience. This application is a powerful method of optimizing every channel by catering to the specific requirements of the customer.
There is a strong ‘must-do’ for businesses to implement omnichannel solutions into their customer’s journey success.
Here we are going to list down the top 3 ways to optimize omnichannel for enhancing customer experience.
1. Optimize Channels to their fullest
The major benefit that comes from offering an omnichannel experience to customers is the fact that it empowers users to personalize their own experience. The customer has the control to access the services, products and support options on demand.
Not every individual wants to be stuck using gadgets such as phone, chatbots, computers, tablets, or live agents.
Looking at a website or software to provide context during a call can help in delivering personalized customer experience for support, marketing and sales teams. Such scenarios happen normally in the world of retail. A customer visits into the store because they order items online and want to collect it. Rather than having the customer service employee looking up the information of the customers manually, the customers can show the employee the order number and speed up the entire process significantly.
2. Combine online and offline worlds
Customers can stroll into a retail store or restaurant such as Starbucks and take advantage of the applications for assistance with coupons, support, contact info, rewards, and payments. Agents can take advantage of CRM platforms on their computer or phone while they speak to a customer on the phone, in person, or via a live chat to provide themselves with important context.
Combining the online, offline, and also physical worlds is another great method in which businesses can improve the customer experience with omnichannel marketing. Consider the example of a person visiting a retail shop, mentioned in the previous point. A customer can either bring in their phone while they speak to an in-store employee, or the employee can use a tab to search for their product while speaking to the customer. This is a situation exceptional to businesses that implement omnichannel solutions because no other strategy allows multiple channels to be used by agents and customers at the same time.
3. Personalized customer experiences
The easier it is for a customer to utilize multiple channels at the same time to their own specific requirements, the more probable it is that they’ll do business with your organization again because of the omnichannel experience being offered. It’s the basic knowledge that businesses who are capable of getting customers to come back time and time again spend less money than those who need to continually worry about outreach.
Omnichannel offers personalized customer experiences by allowing customers to pick and choose what channels they want to use to interact with the business. If a customer can’t walk into the store with their phone out and application open to ask about a product, and they know they can go somewhere else and pay a little bit more for a better experience, chances are that they will spend more. As quoted by American Express, “U.S. consumers are willing to spend 17% more to do business with companies that deliver great service, up from 14% in the year 2014.” Don’t take this chance and prioritize omnichannel at the earliest.
Final words
The omnichannel experience is imperative in the present trust economy. Customers are seen as the ones in power, telling businesses what they need instead of being told by businesses they need for their product or service. With this new dynamic, omnichannel comes into play by personalizing each customer experience and keeping customer retention high.
Personalized customer experiences are particularly ideal for larger companies that don’t have time to interact with each customer on a one-to-one level. Omnichannel makes this possible by letting numerous channels that already exist work with each other to help the customer improve their own experience. When the rate of customer satisfaction improves, word spreads rapidly between family, friends, and social media, encouraging other people who never knew of these possibilities to reach out to your business.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chandrima Samanta
Content-Editor at MartechCube
Chandrima is a Content management executive with a flair for creating high quality content irrespective of genre. She believes in crafting stories irrespective of genre and bringing them to a creative form. Prior to working for MartechCube she was a Business Analyst with Capgemini.