Customer Experience 
Customers switch communication channels primarily to get faster responses. When automated replies slow them down on one platform, they might jump to another like WhatsApp for immediate support.
Omnichannel messaging eliminates this friction by allowing customers to receive prompt responses without repeating themselves across channels. Even small delays — a few seconds of waiting or extra keystrokes — can negatively impact customer experience (CX). Integrating messaging channels lets you directly improve your customer effort score (CES), indicating customers don’t need to work hard for resolutions.
Companies that excel at CX management gain a competitive advantage. In this article, we’ll explore omnichannel messaging in-depth and provide strategies to implement it effectively in your business.
What Is Omnichannel Messaging?
Omnichannel messaging is a unified communication strategy integrating SMS, email, social media, and web chat in a single system. It helps businesses meet customers where they are, making their experience seamless across all messaging channels.
On a unified customer experience platform, you don’t simply switch channels. Instead, all interactions related to a customer are connected regardless of the channel they’re on. This eliminates fragmented conversations and helps businesses ensure consistency in their messaging.
How omnichannel messaging differs from multichannel communication
People often confuse omnichannel and multichannel communication and think that omnichannel messaging takes place on multiple platforms. But that’s not accurate.
In multichannel communication, various messaging channels operate independently. In contrast, omnichannel messaging integrates multiple channels in one unified platform to create a seamless CX. You can maintain context in real time and quickly offer relevant responses and resolutions.
Examples of omnichannel messaging in action
Here are six different situations where you can see omnichannel messaging in action:
Scenario 1: Customer inquiry routing
Compare how your customer inquiry routing workflows would look in the presence or absence of an omnichannel messaging platform:
| Without omnichannel messaging | With omnichannel messaging |
|---|---|
| You often transfer messages between systems, which slows response times and increases the risk of oversight. | Your team manages all channels in a unified platform and automatically routes messages to the right people, speeding up responses. |
Scenario 2: Unified customer profiles
Compare how you would use customer profiles in the presence or absence of an omnichannel messaging platform:
| Without omnichannel messaging | With omnichannel messaging |
|---|---|
| Your agents see fragmented customer histories across different platforms. Gathering the complete context is difficult, leading to repetitive questioning and impersonal support. | You have access to consolidated customer profiles where you see complete interaction histories, making it easier to deliver personalized and efficient assistance. |
Scenario 3: Responses
Compare how your responses would differ in the presence or absence of an omnichannel messaging platform:
| Without omnichannel messaging | With omnichannel messaging |
|---|---|
| Your team switches between multiple tools to answer queries. Duplicate work leads to delays due to manual task management and information retrieval. | Your team operates within a single interface. They resolve issues faster by eliminating redundant steps and automating routine actions like ticket creation and status updates. |
Scenario 4: Collaboration and escalations
Compare how easy it would be to collaborate in the presence or absence of an omnichannel messaging platform:
| Without omnichannel messaging | With omnichannel messaging |
|---|---|
| Your agents forward emails or notes manually when escalating issues. They lose context and waste time reentering data, which can delay the resolution of critical problems. | Your team collaborates in real time within the platform. They escalate issues seamlessly and share complete conversation histories, ensuring all team members stay informed. |
Scenario 5: Analytics and reporting
Compare how different analytics and reporting would be in the presence or absence of an omnichannel messaging platform:
| Without omnichannel messaging | With omnichannel messaging |
|---|---|
| Your managers compile data from separate sources to track performance. They often miss out on comprehensive insights, making it challenging to identify trends or areas for improvement. | You generate unified analytics reports that include data from all channels. This allows you to quickly identify trends and measure key performance indicators so you can constantly improve support. |
Scenario 6: Handling high volumes of inquiries
Compare how you would deal with high volumes of incoming inquiries in the presence or absence of an omnichannel messaging platform:
| Without omnichannel messaging | With omnichannel messaging |
|---|---|
| Your agents manually sort and prioritize messages during peak times. They risk overlooking urgent inquiries, leading to slower resolution times. | The platform automatically prioritizes and queues messages. By focusing on critical issues first, you can efficiently manage high volumes and ensure timely responses. |
Why Is Omnichannel Messaging Used?
There is no longer a linear customer journey; customers might start on a mobile device and continue on a laptop. An omnichannel strategy ensures that your customers can trust you to deliver what they need when they need it and engage with them on the channels they prefer. This kind of engagement is essential in both the short and long term to retain customers and earn new ones.
Jenn VandeZande, Head of Digital Engagement Strategy at SAP Customer Experience, says,
“Companies with great omnichannel engagement strategies retain 89% of their customers, while companies not practicing omnichannel retain only 33%.”
— Jenn VandeZande
The above scenarios demonstrate the advantages of using omnichannel messaging. Let’s take a look at the impact of these advantages.
Improving CX and customer satisfaction
When you respond to a customer in a faster, more personalized way, you naturally create an experience worth remembering. A series of these personalized omnichannel experiences weave a journey full of delight. Whenever a customer interacts with your brand, they experience satisfaction regardless of the touchpoint.
This level of personalization translates into a memorable CX that positively affects your net promoter score and customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys. In turn, you achieve higher retention with more referral business. Customer service statistics say a 5% increase in retention can increase your profits by 95%.
Enhancing customer engagement and conversion rates
American multinational coffeehouse chain Starbucks engages customers through various channels that communicate with them in different ways, influencing their overall involvement with the brand. For example, email messaging provides customers with information, while WhatsApp allows them to connect more personally.
On weekends, email messaging might go straight to the back burner until a new week starts. WhatsApp messages have a higher chance of being opened.
When Starbucks promotes a weekend buy one, get one free offer on WhatsApp, the company’s customers can remain loyal and take advantage of the offer. After they visit its coffee shops, Starbucks can keep in touch with them by emailing them a satisfaction survey.
This is just one example of the many ways businesses can achieve higher customer engagement and conversion with omnichannel service. With an omnichannel platform, managing conversations with your customers becomes easier and more efficient.
Streamlining communication workflows and response times
Centralized customer interactions give agents the complete context for their communications with customers. The agents know that all previous conversations are in one place and that they’re not missing anything. This enables them to respond faster to customers’ inquiries and increases their confidence, which is a must-have when they’re trying to offer satisfactory CX.
Omnichannel messaging software uses AI-powered automation to filter common inquiries and deliver prompt responses. If the issues are complex, they are seamlessly transferred to human agents, ensuring CX isn’t affected while you expedite service delivery through AI. The bots can be configured for different channels from which inquiries come and can maintain all those queries on the unified platform regardless of where they originated.
Leveraging customer data for personalized experiences
When integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) software, omnichannel messaging tools allow businesses to personalize customer journeys. Here’s an image of what this workflow looks like:
API-driven solutions track the customer journey, and the omnichannel messaging platform triggers a personalized response based on the customer’s actions. For example, when a customer types a question to find relevant documentation, if there’s no appropriate answer, the chatbot should automatically ask whether the customer would like to talk to an agent. This is just one simple example of the many moments in a customer’s support journey that create opportunities to offer personalized support.
There’s a flip side to personalization as well.
Irem Isik, Head of Marketing at Storyly, says:
“With the accelerated concerns about privacy, any attempt to deliver a personalized experience that might seem installed, attached, or disparate is doomed to fail. The user will not welcome these due to discomfort about being ‘tracked.’ Instead, personalization should be intrinsic to, genuinely integrated into, an organic part of the user journey. It should blend with the overall experience so the user can voluntarily engage with and be part of the story.”
— Irem Isik
Therefore, you have to use personalization in a way that doesn’t backfire on you.
How to Adopt Omnichannel Messaging
There are several steps you should take before and while onboarding an omnichannel messaging solution.
Assess your current communication strategy and messaging channels
Before you go omnichannel, take stock of the various communication channels you use and the results they drive. This will help you identify your applications and understand how customers respond to them.
Check for any compliance issues you might face. For example, when you introduce a new communication channel, make sure you comply with the regulations that affect it. Texting is a regulated channel, so if you add SMS, make sure that you follow the applicable rules.
Your current communication strategy will help you identify gaps and gain insights into which channels your customers use the most. When researching omnichannel messaging platforms, check whether they support these preferred channels.
Choose the right omnichannel messaging platform
This choice is crucial. The platform you select should be able to integrate all the customer communication channels you want into a single interface. Most importantly, the platform should comply with the relevant regulations concerning the handling of customer data and communications, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act.
Check whether your solution offers automation and AI-powered chatbots to enable self-service and automate support to some extent. Ensure the solution integrates with your CRM software and supplies real-time analytics so you can draw insights and improve communication.
Make sure the tool you select has the following features:
- Multichannel support: Provides seamless support for channels like SMS, Facebook Messenger (now Meta), voice, email, live chat, and social media
- Unified dashboard: Offers a single interface to manage communications across all channels in real time
- Reporting and analytics: Help track engagement, response times, CSAT, and other performance metrics
- Automation and AI: Increases efficiency and speeds up service delivery thanks to chatbot functionality with intelligent routing and automated contact center workflows
- Seamless integration: Can integrate with CRM software, helpdesk, and other enterprise solutions via the API
- Mobile compatibility: Offers a mobile app for efficient communication when you’re on the go
- Customization options: Deliver the ability to customize workflows and templates to suit your business needs
- Easy onboarding and training: Provides clear documentation, tutorials, and vendor support so users can transition in a streamlined way
- Data security: Offers end-to-end encryption and robust security protocols to protect sensitive information in transit or at rest and complies with standards and regulations, such as the GDPR and HIPAA
- Demo availability: Allows you to test a platform’s capabilities before making a full-time commitment
Implement automation, AI-powered chatbots, and CRM integration
Once you have onboarded the tool, start configuring it to implement automation and AI capabilities. This will help you automate the responses to common questions instead of being obligated to register the queries as customer support cases.
By using AI, you can reduce response times and enable your workforce to concentrate on issues that matter. This will keep your team focused on complicated customer issues where support is indispensable. Ensure two-way communication between agents and customers to maximize the amount of attention they get from human beings.
Sync the omnichannel messaging tool with your customer data platform or CRM solution to track customer preferences and behavior. This will allow you to leverage insights and optimize workflows to better support customers.
Train teams on omnichannel communication best practices
To improve CX, your support team must know how to keep your business’s interactions with your customers consistent across all touchpoints regardless of which channel they use to contact you. Provide training for your support staff so they’re accustomed to the workflows. It’s a building block in creating a strong team that knows how to offer customers the level of personalization they expect.
Here are some of the common omnichannel communication best practices that your team can adopt:
- Collect and merge data from all channels so you see the complete picture for every customer. Connect all channels through a reliable omnichannel messaging platform.
- Use standard guidelines to ensure your tone and style stay the same across all channels.
- Ensure your agents have the full context when customers move from one channel to another. Use shared data to tailor responses and meet individual customer needs.
- Track metrics across all channels, and adjust your strategies based on real-time data.
- Collect feedback on every channel, and refine your approach to improve the CX.
- Apply robust security measures, and comply with data protection rules at every touchpoint.
Make Omnichannel a Reality With Nextiva
Nextiva’s omnichannel contact center brings all customer interactions together in a unified platform. This makes it easier to deliver a consistent experience using the context aggregated from previous interactions and customer data. This connected CX lets you turn fragmented experiences into freely flowing interactions regardless of customers’ chosen channels.
Nextiva empowers you to:
- Integrate SMS, email, chat, social media, and voice
- Implement AI-powered chatbots and intelligent routing to reduce wait times
- Keep track of customer behavior and preferences via CRM integration for more personalized experiences
- Maintain a centralized view of all customer interactions to improve response times and customer retention
Most importantly, Nextiva checks all the boxes that make it the right omnichannel messaging platform for your business.
Would you like to transform the way you interact with your customers? Find out more about Nextiva’s omnichannel contact center.
A true end-to-end omnichannel platform.
Connect with customers on their preferred channels anywhere and anytime and streamline customer journeys.
Omnichannel Messaging FAQs
Below are some questions customers frequently ask:
Omnichannel messaging makes a customer’s interactions with a brand seamless regardless of the channels they’re using to communicate. Additionally, omnichannel messaging:
🔹 Reduces response times while improving the customer’s satisfaction level
🔹 Increases customer engagement and offers more opportunities for consumers to show their loyalty, which ensures higher retention
🔹 Optimizes business workflows while scaling the customer engagement strategy
Your choice of which messaging channels to prioritize depends on the kind of business you’re in and the type and frequency of the responses you already receive. For example, if you have an engaged WhatsApp community, it would be unusual to designate email as a high-priority channel. You should prioritize the channels that offer you maximum engagement and conversions.
Customers appreciate personalized experiences and real-time responses. Consistent experiences across all messaging channels build trust and loyalty over time. When you deliver superior CX, you encourage customers to trust your brand and give you positive referrals.
Yes. Omnichannel messaging platforms have automation capabilities to handle simple customer inquiries. This allows you to streamline customer support and gives your human agents time to focus on complicated inquiries.
