Customer Experience 
Customers have different preferences — just like their fashion choices. Not everyone wants to pick up the phone. Some prefer text or email, while others rely on self-service options. The key is to meet them where they are.
Omnichannel support makes this possible. It ensures a seamless experience across multiple communication channels, keeping conversations consistent even when customers switch between them.
Without a unified system, miscommunication can creep in — leading to frustration. And after just one bad experience, 72% of customers will take their business elsewhere.
A unified contact center platform with omnichannel functionality prevents this, improving retention and driving repeat revenue.
How to Deliver Omnichannel Support for Your Brand
There’s a way to enable omnichannel support for your business. Let’s explore the functional part of it first before focusing on the technical requirements.
Understand customer expectations and behaviors
Customers have expectations. However, their behavior is highly influenced by how you manage their needs or expectations. For example, customers may shift channels due to slow response times or inadequate staff training.
See what drives their behavior and what their expectations are. Sometimes, they have an intrinsic channel preference, so make sure you respect it. It’s best to review touchpoints throughout the entire customer journey and understand how channel switches happen and what triggers lead to them.
Integrate multiple communication channels
Connect email, SMS, live chat, WhatsApp, and phone calls into a single customer support system. This makes it easier for you to deliver a seamless experience, especially when interactions scale. PwC found that 43% of all consumers would pay more for greater convenience.
It’s best to use customer service software that supports customer relationship management (CRM) integrations and real-time agent collaboration.
Provide self-service options
There are customers who want a self-service option like a knowledge base or FAQ page where they can self-resolve their queries. It’s quick and doesn’t require people to wait for support to get back. They support themselves. It’s empowering.
Configure an AI-powered chatbot with dynamic NLP capabilities. The chatbot would be well-equipped to understand what the customer requires and be able to personalize the responses accordingly.
Some 46% of customers expect a company to respond faster than four hours.
Most modern AI chat options, like Nextiva, offer customizable automation to route conversations to live agents seamlessly. This chat is integrated well into Nextiva’s unified support system, enabling efficient omnichannel support for your customers. This adds speed to your service processes, ensuring customers have a decent experience when they get in touch.
Ensure real-time access to customer data
Centralized customer data is the key to personalization, especially in an omnichannel support system. When queries come in from all directions, you can’t have the customers’ data scattered everywhere. The service agents would be completely puzzled about what to look at.
When your customers’ data lives in one place, you get a complete customer view. The personalization factor is more straightforward to accommodate and maintain consistently. In an ongoing call, agents could quickly check out the full overview of a customer, presenting them as a more informed person to handle queries.
Key Advantages of Omnichannel Support
Below are some benefits that support or success teams get from an omnichannel support platform.
Enhances customer experience and satisfaction
A customer is satisfied when their issue is resolved. They are not looking for an experience; they just want someone to look at and resolve their issue promptly. In Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report 2020, they found that up to 60% of customers say long wait times for a resolution are the most frustrating part of customer service.
You would be surprised to know that the average response time to a customer support ticket is seven hours and four minutes. The top 5% of companies reply within 16 minutes.
With the help of an omnichannel support tool, you get to see previous customer interactions and understand the context. This allows you to skip past the usual Q&A when a customer reaches out and move toward resolution while saving time when switching between channels. It means you don’t just improve your response time but become better equipped to offer quick resolutions.
Improves customer retention and brand loyalty
Businesses usually customize a plug-and-play product to fit their use cases and specific requirements. No matter how perfect the solution is, there will be some issues requiring a service that offers quick resolution.
When customers encounter such issues and reach out to support, they expect a quick resolution. A unified contact center software allows you to deliver omnichannel support in line with customer expectations. The result is that customers are satisfied. When such experiences repeat with consistency, they form a brand’s impression. Customers start trusting the business and automatically inclines their loyalty toward it.
In this way, the business gets more customer loyalty and can retain more customers, achieving a higher lifetime value for their customer base.
Makes agents efficient and productive
In the absence of an omnichannel solution, agents go through a haphazard workflow, trying to get customer data and previous interactions from both old and new channels. They don’t follow a set standard practice and might end up delivering inconsistent CX to customers.
An omnichannel solution prevents this. Agents get one place to access all customer data rather than hopping around to see what’s most recent. When such a system is connected to CRM software, it lets customer service agents view all customer interactions and gather context more effectively. This reduces the manual work spent in information silos while giving the team the tools to deliver seamless personalized CX.
Optimizes data collection and personalization
When you take an overview of the data, it helps you connect the dots. You’re able to absorb the whole story instead of just a few parts of it. This context automatically seeps into the service you deliver.
You get in-depth insights into what customers say and the “why” behind it. This allows you to personalize customer messaging and improve their service experience. According to Zendesk CX trends, more than half of agents agree that having access to customer data that lets them personalize interactions will enable them to do their jobs better.
Resources Needed for Omnichannel Support
You need the right mix of people and technology to enable omnichannel support in your business. Here’s how to construct this mix:
1. A robust customer service software
Your customer service software should support omnichannel communication.
According to this article, the top five contact center solutions are:
Make sure the platform you consider integrates with chatbots, messaging applications, and social media platforms. This will build a cohesive system for supporting customers with a seamless CX.
2. Skilled support team and agent training
Train customer service teams to manage inquiries across different channels. Encourage the team to come on board and help ramp up the system. This will help increase agent productivity while managing high call volumes and chat queues.
Make sure the team can communicate effectively internally. Enabling good collaboration will help everyone get acquainted with the system. Conduct periodic training if needed. Once the system’s workflows become muscle memory for the team, it will be easier to ensure consistency in CX even when the volume of calls grows extensively.
3. Automation and AI-powered tools
Let chatbots automate routine inquiries. Create workflows to address complex queries while facilitating a seamless transfer to a live agent. For example, a client asks a question such as, “Can I get accident coverage without a medical exam?” Such questions can easily be automated regardless of whether it is a pop-up on chat, email, social media, or any other preferred channel.
When answers are delivered in real time, customers can get a fast resolution. In this way, AI drives customer engagement while facilitating natural conversations between customers and AI agents.
4. Analytics and reporting dashboards
Keep a check on customer service metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, resolution times, and response rates. These metrics will show which experiences are positive and which appear to be false positives. For example, a slow resolution time does not always mean a highly positive CX. Maybe the customer didn’t get the support they were expecting and had to close the conversation because a suitable resolution was not available.
Therefore, you need to look at these metrics together to get an accurate picture of customers’ experiences with your support. These insights will help you optimize support and double down on digital channels that are likely to deliver a seamless CX. The data will help you optimize the omnichannel customer service strategy and further improve the omnichannel customer experience.
Best Practices for Omnichannel Support
Below are some notable best practices for implementing omnichannel support in a business.
Create a seamless customer journey across all channels
Companies with strong omnichannel strategies retain 89% of their customers on average. However, those with weaker strategies retain only 33%. Therefore, it’s essential to offer a seamless journey across all channels customers use to interact with a company.
Simply put, create a consistent support experience in every channel, like social media, phone, or chat. Ensure your customers go through this experience without any friction to get the resolutions they need.
Leverage automation without losing the human touch
Customers feel neglected when paired with bots that shy away from delivering the support needed.
On the flip side, bots help marketers reduce the manual work involved in addressing simple user queries. The sweet spot is using bots and humans intelligently.
Let customer support chatbots automate queries that are too simple for agents. Pass on the complex queries to live agents who would ensure the human factor in conversations and solutions. Create rules and workflows with the chatbot to deliver support requests to live agents and maintain a balance.
Personalize customer interactions
Some 90% of customers find personalized content very or somewhat appealing. This personalization comes from knowing customer history and preferences. It’s stored across different platforms. Integrating all platforms into a unified system allows you to absorb this context effectively while adding personalization to interactions.
Look for signals and triggers you can use to deliver proactive support. This goes a long way in creating the service experience that customers expect. If a customer has shared feedback, you can implement it proactively, and show them you care.
Measure performance and continuously optimize
According to Salesforce research, 69% of agents find it tricky to balance service speed and quality. It’s essential to be efficient, but at what cost? You don’t want to lose the “service” in customer service while trying to scale your contact center.
Look at the metrics continuously to ensure you’re not just delivering false positives for CX. For example, if your resolution time is low but the CSAT score is also in the detractors’ range, the chances are that customers aren’t getting the support they expect. Make the required optimizations to prevent this and offer the service quality your customers deserve.
Such insights would help you refine omnichannel strategies while improving service efficiency.
Tips to Implement Omnichannel Support In Your Business
Take the following steps to implement omnichannel support or service in your organization:
1. Define omnichannel support goals
When investing in an omnichannel support solution, it is best to get priorities in order. Ideally, you’ll use it to increase customer satisfaction and retention or improve operational efficiency. Keep focused on what is your highest priority when setting up the solution and workflows.
Naturally, whatever priority you keep will influence CSAT, retention, and the relevant CX metrics.
2. Select the right omnichannel support solution
Select a platform that seamlessly integrates chat, phone, email, and messaging apps into a single interface. Check if the integration causes any breaks or delays in the user experience. The interactions should happen seamlessly across channels.
Moreover, the platform you choose should support real-time agent collaboration. The team should be able to work together to resolve an issue. See if the solution integrates with a CRM system. This will keep customer data up to date, helping agents access call history and all interactions without friction.
Make sure you pick a solution that grows effectively with your business. When your customer base expands, various channels will emerge. Your omnichannel system should be flexible enough to integrate additional tools without causing any major disruptions.
3. Train support agents for an omnichannel environment
Get support agents to adopt an omnichannel environment with standardized procedures. When you make the processes uniform, it becomes easier to get the team on board. This includes setting unified escalation protocols and follow-up procedures.
Ensure you implement data synchronization across all platforms to provide every agent with access to up-to-date customer information.
Educate the staff about the omnichannel approach and train them to work on the omnichannel ecosystem, delivering personalization at every touchpoint, regardless of the channel.
4. Optimize based on customer feedback and performance metrics
Collect feedback regularly from customers to learn more about their experience across different channels. This is direct feedback, and it should be implemented effectively. Analyze CSAT and agent KPIs to see how the two are connected and understand what discrepancies are occurring.
Use these insights to improve and refine processes while optimizing technology integrations. It’s best to keep up with the industry trends, as support technology changes fast, and updating your tech lets you capitalize faster.
Deliver Seamless Omnichannel Support With Nextiva
With Nextiva’s omnichannel solution, businesses deliver fast and personalized support at scale across all channels. It integrates seamlessly with phone, chat, social media, SMS, and email. AI-powered automation addresses simple queries, and workflow customizations let you transfer chats to live agents in real time.
Streamline customer support across all channels so you can deliver consistently personalized responses. Nextiva scales with your business, making you more efficient as you grow.
Ready to transform your customer support? Learn more about Nextiva’s omnichannel solutions today.
True end-to-end omnichannel platform for customer service.
Connect with customers on their preferred channels anywhere, anytime, and streamline the customer journey.
FAQs About Omnichannel Support
Check out the questions people frequently ask about omnichannel support:
For omnichannel support, your customer is at the center of the strategy. You get a single view of customers across all channels. The interactions are connected regardless of the platform a customer uses to interact with the business. Overall, omnichannel is more customer-centric.
Multichannel support keeps channels at the center of the strategy and offers multiple views for different channels. It’s a channel-centric strategy. Since the customer is at the center, they get a consistent experience in omnichannel customer service. However, you might observe some inconsistencies in CX for multichannel customer service.
Omnichannel customer support is important because it allows customers to experience similar service standards with the same level of personalization across all channels. This improves customer satisfaction and positively influences retention.
The key components of a successful omnichannel support strategy include integrated communication channels, automation, real-time customer data, and agents who are well-trained in the omnichannel ecosystem.
Yes, any business, regardless of size, can implement omnichannel support. It empowers them to ensure consistent personalization in all interactions across different channels. Scalable omnichannel solutions allow small businesses to provide seamless customer support without a large budget.
