In today’s digitally-enhanced world, top-quality service that exceeds customer expectations to secure long-term customer retention is crucial to ensuring a strong competitive edge in the global sales market. In the article on expert tips to improving customer retention via top-tier customer service, we mentioned:

• long-term brand ambassadorship increases average order value (AOV) since loyal customers spend more money than the average/new customer up to 23%, and
• customer retention has a positive impact on your bottom line since existing customers provide 65% of a company’s sales profits.

Omnichannel customer service (CS) that offers seamless Omnichannel experiences is a surefire way to ensure top-tier customer experiences (CX) that influence long-term customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth marketing, and strong brand competition, leading to significant above-competition market share. Here’s a detailed guide on omnichannel customer service and how to build seamless omnichannel experiences that wow customers, creating sensational brand value that leads to long-term success. We’ll look at: (1) what the omni-channel CS experience is, (2) omni-channel service strategy advantages, (3) tips to building an omni-channel CS strategy, and (4) how Callnovo’s omnichannel customer service outsourcing solutions can provide for you a strong advantage — all so you’re thoroughly-equipped to ensure customer-centric service that leads to fantastic CX.

What Constitutes Omnichannel Customer Service Experiences?

Support access via all channels is crucial for maximizing on brand growth, ensuring customers receive the Support they need — when needed.

The omni-channel CS experience:

“… markets/sells to and serves customers on every
channel — creating integrated, cohesive CX without limits.”

Here’s some examples:

• Disney provides various features/tools for customers to enjoy enhanced CX, offering omnichannel support on all channels.
• The well-known graduation apparel brand, Graduation Mall, ensures customers have access to phone, live chat, and email support, maximizing customer engagement on common communication channels.
• Activision’s games offer users multiple contact channels — ranging from in-game support, to phone, to live chat, and to email.

Omnichannel vs. Multi-channel Customer Support

Accordingly, a distinction should be made between omnichannel/multi-channel customer support; as seen above, Disney provides a truly omni-channel experience because its full feature/tool integration thoroughly-enhances customers’ satisfaction.

Here’s the main omnichannel/multichannel support differences, boiling down to the integration depth incorporated between your business’ offered channels/platforms:

• Omni-channel, unlike multichannel, CS experiences provide multiple contact channels — each channel being interconnected so seamless experiences can be proportioned.
• Omni-channel experiences thrive on all devices/platforms; a multi-channel service strategy may only include just 2–3 channels and a few platforms/devices.

Though multi-channel is generally invested in, a consistent, seamless experience is lacking; omnichannel CS experiences account for every platform/device, creating an equally-efficient, smooth, positive experience.

Omnichannel Customer Service Advantages

Since omnichannel CS ensures seamless CX across the entire customer journey, you can benefit as such:

• More Rapid Ticket Resolution Times
  Omnichannel support allows your customer service representatives (CSRs) to rapidly-handle support requests, using digital tools/strategies that increase resolution rates/customer satisfaction.
• Better Personalized Service
  Omnichannel brand communication makes customer relationship building easier, ensuring relationships last, improving brand loyalty — as the customer journey is tailored to individual needs.
• More Streamlined Customer Journey
  You can understand the customer lifecycle better since you’ll have access to conversation history and can deliver tailored support.
• Reduced Customer Churn
  When customers are reached across their preferred channels in real time, churn is significantly-reduced.

Tips to Ensuring Seamless Omnichannel Experiences

Here’s some tips to ensuring seamless omnichannel experiences, improving long-term brand loyalty and ensuring substantial brand growth:

Self-Service

Reliable self-service improves the overall brand image — as you offer enhanced communication, ensuring customers have rapid access to info., allowing for tailoring experiences, saving time & resources.

• Self-service reduces support tickets so CSRs have time to handle priority tasks.
• Self-service strengthens brand reputation because it creates positive customer engagement.
• You can expand customers’ knowledge/skills for resolving similar customer issues down the road.

Live Engagement Tools

To ensure seamless omnichannel customer service, empowering CSRs with live customer support & engagement tools — such as co-browsing & video chat — is important, building long-term customer relationships. Advanced live engagement tools ensure CSRs connect with consumers in real time through collaboration with customers’ browsers or via face-to-face engagement, ensuring CSRs can identify customer issues quicker so effective solutions are provided.

• Direct customer interaction ensures agents can acquire full knowledge to provide rapid solutions, improving first contact resolution rates significantly.
• Direct engagement greatly-impacts customer satisfaction; co-browsing/live video chat ensures customers are assisted instantly and that issues are resolved during first contact.

Understand Customer Expectations

As customers expect contextualized interaction/seamless engagement between all comm. channels, your business should understand the customer journey/lifecycle — leading to personalized CX that increases customer-felt brand value. When you understand how customers interact across channels, your CS team(s) can optimize processes to reduce customers’ felt frustration, bridge gaps, and influence brand loyalty.

• Omni-channel CS improves customer insight acquisition; each journey map affords personalization, meeting/exceeding customer expectations and ensuring optimal multichannel experiences that increase future customer engagement opportunities.
• By identifying preferred channels, considering reactive/proactive channels, your business can offer tailored customer engagement that meets customer needs successfully, improving brand loyalty, increasing customer lifetime value.
• Mapping customer journeys means valuable insight into customers’ previous interactions, conversation history, etc.; based on each insight, you can deliver assistance across each preferred CS channel through self-service portals, chatbots, live web chat, or visual engagement tools.

Enhance your Media Presence

80% of brand customers utilize social networking; such functionality has made communication easier, more direct, and more meaningful than traditional channels. An omni-channel support strategy, coupled with social media, is crucial for improving overall CX.

• Social media offers prompt, effective service, allowing CSRs to interact with customers easily for rapid service — thus improving omnichannel customer service experiences.
• Social media networking enhances customer engagement by allowing CS teams to know their target audience so specific products/services can be positioned as the most viable option.
• According to a 3rd party, 71% of customers that’ve enjoyed pleasant CX become brand advocates — improving long-term customer acquisition; social media networking as part of the omni-channel experience opens opportunities for this to happen.

Hybrid Support

Hybrid support improves CS experiences by balancing artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots/human interaction to deliver the best of both — which requires a complete understanding of live chat vs. chatbot interaction. As a balanced support approach manages resources through priority tasks, you can use chatbots early, providing human support to back-up complex customer needs.

• Hybrid support lets your business engage customers 24/7/365 so customer needs can be handled instantly, increasing customer satisfaction.
• Bots that automate the repetitive collecting of info. afford the right CSRs the opportunity to have customer info. transferred to them automatically so quick resolution of issues can be provided, increasing customer satisfaction.
• Your company can build consumer trust via chatbots since they use previous customer service touchpoints/insights to offer the best interactions.

Key Business Software Integration

Integration of omnichannel communication tools with existing business communication/collaboration software, such as your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, is extremely important to customer engagement enhancement — as integration ensures CSRs have detailed customer history, order data, personal notes, contact info., communication channel preferences, etc. With integration, CSRs can automatically access stored data during customer interactions on all channels.

• CRM software, coupled with an omnichannel support strategy, allows you to seamlessly connect with customers by unifying interaction on every channel.
• CSRs with high channel volumes on all channels can access customer data/resolve customer requests from a central interface; such a 360-degree view significantly-increases customer inquiry resolution productivity.
• An omnichannel service strategy, coupled with CRM integration, brings multi-source data together; CSRs aren’t required to separately-analyze each channel — and, they can use consumer data to generate reports in real-time.

Callnovo’s CS Outsourcing Guarantees Seamless Omnichannel Experiences

Callnovo Contact Center can support your business with excellent omnichannel customer service outsourcing, ensuring seamless omnichannel experiences that lead to heightened customer retention/long-term brand loyalty.

Some of Callnovo’s call center outsourcing advantages are:

• Omnichannel Support — CS teams ensure accessible, rapid customer contact through all service channels — guaranteeing always-ready support, leading to enhanced CX and influencing long-term customer brand ambassadorship/customer loyalty.
• Always-available Service — tailored plans ensure customers’ satisfaction/CX is maximized by continually meeting customers’ needs without limits.
• High-quality Expertise — global CS teams share expert service backgrounds/skills to ensure quality service with the utmost success — skilled in areas as:
  interpersonal communication skills,
  customer-centric enthusiasm/service attitude,
  logical thinking skills,
  management/operations skills, and
  product/troubleshooting service experience.
• Native Language Support — localized support ensures customers’ needs are met efficiently, conforming to culture, improving customer loyalty.

Conclusion

Omnichannel CS strategies are key to ensuring seamless omnichannel experiences that proportion top-tier CX, leading to long-term customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth marketing, and strong brand competition. With Callnovo’s comprehensive, multilingual & omnichannel customer service outsourcing solutions, you can meet your customers’ CX expectations, improving customer acquisition/retention numbers, securing global sales success.