The business landscape is ever-evolving with the newest innovations and technologies that influence consumer needs and demands.

If fifteen years ago, placing a newspaper ad would dramatically increase your store’s foot traffic, it’s not the same today. Gone are the days when offering a telephone customer care service would suffice, as omni-channel has shifted the business paradigm.

For this reason, outsourcing companies no longer just offer phone or email customer support. Customer care service can be delivered through social media, mobile apps, messaging platforms, or even SMS.

However, omni-channel doesn’t merely mean that you should be on the online platforms available. In this ever-changing digital landscape, it’s important to offer a true omni-channel customer experience.

What is an omni-channel experience?

A true omni-channel experience means seamless and consistent integration of multiple devices and touchpoints such as your brick-and-mortar store, website, e-commerce page, social media accounts, telephone, email, and other communication channels. It has the customer’s best interests at the center of it all.

Yes, it seems like a costly and time-consuming effort for businesses, but it’s worth it. A true omni-channel engagement experience extends beyond your brand’s universe. Here are the reasons you should offer an omni-channel engagement to improve customer experience.

1. It can help you understand your customers.

Understanding customers is an inherent value of the omni-channel approach to sales, marketing, and customer care service. An omni-channel approach allows businesses to collect data about their potential and existing customers to understand them on a deeper level and address their concerns more effectively.

Customers interact with brands through different touch points, be it by phone, email, social media, or your website. You can collect information at every touchpoint and create a 360-degree view of this user.

2. It personalises the customer experience.

Now that you’ve come to a deeper understanding of what your customer needs and wants, you can create a personalised experience across your online and offline channels. You now know how and where you can reach your customers, and what information you can offer each of them.

Use your real-time access to your customer profile across multiple channels. Since you have their account information, order history, and past interactions with your customer support team, you can determine how they talk about your brand on social media. This information will help you accurately predict your customer’s preferences and behavior.

Ultimately, you can offer better deals, product recommendations, and information that best suit their needs.

3. It creates a compelling browsing and shopping experience.

Imagine one of your customers has been searching your online store for a product but the specific color they want is not available online, so they exit the app.

You now know what product they’re looking for. With the use of beacons, you can send them an instant message with a coupon code saying that the product they’ve been looking for can be purchased in-store at a discounted rate. So, they go to your store to purchase the same product they were looking at online.

That’s what you call a compelling omni-channel shopping experience.

4. It enhances existing customer relationships.

Improving your relationship with existing customers will increase their brand loyalty. Recent studies conclude that repeat customers spend 67% more than first-time customers.

With an omni-channel customer care service, you can assist customers more efficiently and effectively. After all, you already know so much about them from previous touchpoints.

With a holistic view of your customer, each interaction will be like a continuation of a previous one regardless if it’s from another platform.

Furthermore, an omni-channel engagement ensures your customers that you will be available to answer their concerns through any platform. Consider that customers are less tolerant nowadays of longer wait times when it comes to customer support. Instead of calling your support team about a problem they’re having with one of your products, they will take to Twitter or Facebook instead.

So, be where your customers are. Go where they go to enhance your relationship with them.

5. It makes the post-purchase experience memorable and share-worthy.

Disney plays the omni-channel game so well. Not only is their website fully responsive, but it also sports a very easy-to-use interface where you can book trips be it from your desktop or mobile device. Once you’re booked, you can use the My Disney Experience tool to plan your whole Disney trip—from where you’ll dine to getting your Fast Pass.

When you get to the park, you can use their mobile app to figure out where the rides and attractions are, along with information about the estimated waiting time. Disney even goes above and beyond with their Magic Band, which you can use as your Fast Pass, hotel room key, photo storage device for any pictures taken with Disney characters, and a food ordering tool. This omni-channel experience really makes Disney the happiest place on earth!

If you were one of the Disney customers, wouldn’t you want to share this wonderful experience with your friends? Surely, you’ll hop onto Facebook or Instagram and let people know what a great time you’re having.

Get to your bottom line faster with an omni-channel engagement approach.

The bottom line is that you want customers to become more familiar with your brand and ultimately, increase your sales. You want your brand to become a household name so that whenever a customer finds a need for one of your product, they will automatically go to your website or store.

According to Worldpay research, omni-channel shoppers spend between 50 to 300% more than traditional shoppers. So, engage your customers on multiple platforms and provide them a seamless and consistent customer experience across all channels.

The post 5 Ways Omni-Channel Engagement Improves Customer Experience appeared first on transcosmos.