Today, there are more customer service channels than ever, creating a growing challenge for businesses that want to meet their customers where they’re most active. 

Small businesses often have complex communication demands, especially communication-centric businesses like contact centers, making customer support solutions imperative. 

Various customer service solutions can help your support team, decrease response times, and allow your business to improve support agent performance overall. 

Here, we’ll discuss different customer support tools to help you determine which is right for your business and when you should adopt a new solution. 

Popular Customer Service Solutions Today

The three main categories of customer service management solutions — traditional communication channels, digital channels, and emerging solutions — can each improve the customer experience in different ways. 

Traditional channels

Traditional customer service channels include phone and email support. 

Phone support is still a popular communication channel for customers and businesses. It allows for real-time interaction and the handling of complex customer issues. Interactive voice response (IVR) systems can automate some aspects of phone support, including answering basic customer queries and promptly routing callers to relevant agents. 

IVR systems can benefit businesses of all sizes, but they’re particularly important for call centers that receive high volumes of incoming calls.

Email support is the other traditional customer support channel. It allows for asynchronous communication, so customers can reach out at their convenience, even when the business is closed. Support agents are given time to research customer issues and address them thoroughly. 

Many businesses rely on help desk software solutions like Freshdesk or Zendesk to improve the customer email experience. These software solutions use ticketing systems to ensure all emails are promptly answered and customer concerns addressed. 

Digital channels

Digital channels have become increasingly important as customer support platforms, especially following the rise of social media. To deliver an excellent customer service experience, you need to consider digital and social channels. 

Live chat software provides real-time interaction through a website or mobile app chat windows. It’s ideal for providing easy answers to quick questions or offering technical assistance. Some live chat software includes AI-powered chatbot functionality to answer basic questions or troubleshoot common issues and direct more complex customer needs to live support agents. 

Social media support allows businesses to address customer inquiries directly on social media platforms for real-time reputation management. This may include responding to public comments on posts and private messages users send across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X.

Self-service options empower customers to find answers independently through online knowledge bases, FAQs, and online communities. Customers often prefer self-service options, if available, for basic support needs. 

Related: How to Build a Successful Social Media Customer Service Program

Emerging solutions

Emerging solutions are becoming more prevalent as customer support platforms. Many call center tools are now adding these CX functionalities.: 

Video chat can offer a more personal approach for complex issues. Virtual meeting apps are well-suited for product demonstrations and stakeholder presentations. 

Co-browsing allows a support agent and customer to browse the customer’s web session together to diagnose and resolve technical difficulties. 

Messaging apps are popular with businesses, allowing them to respond to customer communications directly on tools like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. 

What to Look for in a Customer Service Solution

When choosing customer service solutions, you should consider your business needs and the capabilities of the specific platforms. Many businesses and contact centers are choosing solutions that offer all-in-one CS platforms for ease of use, but there are key features that you should consider. 

Omnichannel support

Customers today expect seamless interactions across all channels, including phone, email, live chat, and social media.

Suppose they reach out on social media and follow up with a phone call. In that case, you want support agents to be able to trace the entire history and respond accordingly — especially since customer service statistics show that more customers than ever expect personalized support.

Look for the following features to support omnichannel contact center functionality:

• Unified platform: Your CS solution should integrate all important communication channels into a single platform to create a smooth transition between channels for the customer and the customer service team.
• Self-service options: Knowledge bases and FAQs can enable customer success and empowerment, increasing retention while reducing the number of messages and calls your agents have to navigate. 

Agent efficiency

The more efficient your agents are, the better your customer care will be. Customer service software should include features that can improve support agent efficiency and performance in multiple ways, including:

• Automated workflows: Repetitive tasks like password resets or appointment scheduling should be automated to free up agent time for complex issues and improve response times.
• Knowledge management: A robust knowledge base with easy access to relevant articles, product information, and troubleshooting guides empowers agents to solve problems quickly.
• Screen pop-ups: When a contact begins, screen pop-ups automatically display customer data, including purchase history and past interactions. This allows agents to review past exchanges quickly and deliver personalized support. 
• Call recording and quality monitoring: You can evaluate agent performance to identify areas for improvement and use call recordings for coaching purposes.

Performance management and analytics

Performance management and analytics help you understand how your customers feel about your support across the customer journey. They can also help you assess the performance of individual customer service agents.

Look for CS solutions with these features: 

• Real-time and historical reporting: You can track key call center metrics including average handle time, first contact resolution rate, and customer satisfaction to identify areas for improvement and measure success.
• Dashboards: These tools provide agents and supervisors with real-time insights into call volume, wait times, and agent performance, enabling proactive adjustments.
• Workforce management: You can forecast call volumes, schedule agents effectively, and identify peak times for staffing optimization.

Scalability and security

Your current needs are important, but you want to choose a CS solution that can adapt to your business’s growth. Many businesses, for example, will need to accommodate increased call volumes and diversified call needs as their business scales.

Make sure you consider the following:

• Cloud-based solutions: These offer long-term scalability, including the ability for employees to work remotely, while eliminating the need for an extensive hardware investment.
• Scalable plans: Some CS solutions are geared exclusively toward small businesses. Look for tools that offer pricing packages that can scale alongside your business or adapt to call centers.
• Data security: Data security priorities should include features like encryption, access controls, and compliance with relevant data privacy regulations.

Integrations

While many CS solutions integrate with diverse communication channels, contact centers should also look for solutions that offer additional integrations with third-party tools. These integrations can streamline data syncing and automate workflows across different platforms, significantly improving agent performance.

Consider tools that offer the following:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) integrations: Integrations with CRM software can provide agents with essential customer data to deliver personalized support.
• AI-powered integrations: Integrations to facilitate sentiment analysis, chatbots for basic inquiries, and speech recognition can deliver automated and streamlined data entry. 
• Integration with your existing tech stack: Built-in integrations (or the options to integrate with API access) for your existing tech stack, including your virtual phone system, project management software, or social media management software, can be invaluable.

Ease of use and implementation

Any CS platform you choose should have an intuitive interface for all agents. This will reduce training requirements and speed up initial implementation and new employee onboarding.

You can evaluate each vendor’s implementation process and ongoing support to ensure a smooth transition and continued assistance as needed. 

Nextiva: The Best CS Solution for Contact Centers

Call centers need strong, scalable customer support solutions that can handle diverse channels and high customer contact volumes. 

You should consider your existing and projected future needs when shopping for a new CS solution. 

Do you need more traditional touchpoints and support if you regularly have high call volume? Or are more digital touchpoints essential if you want to reduce call volume or have high website traffic?

You should consider your specific customer base, too; younger audiences are more likely to turn to online and self-service support options first, while older generations may still prefer more traditional methods as a first line of defense.

Brands and call centers seeking to unify their CS channels under a single platform should look at Nextiva’s Contact Center solutions. 

Nextiva is a leading provider of reliable VoIP systems for contact centers. We also offer UCaaS and customer support features so your team can handle all support needs within a single dashboard. All solutions come with Nextiva’s intuitive interface, exceptional support, and high reliability. 

Call center agents deal with frustrated customers and difficult technical issues more often than you think.

Ongoing call center training prepares your agents to handle many situations, including interactions with unhappy customers.

Your agents deal with many callers daily while working in a call center. Training helps manage complex situations and pushes their operational efficiency beyond set benchmarks.

This guide will help you advise your agents and call center managers, making training more effective. The suggestions below will show you how to enable call center staff and train them for better performance.

Is Call Center Training Needed? 

Whether in-person, on-demand, or online, call center training modules create a supportive work environment of frontline agents who feel competent and valued.

Beyond the apparent benefits, training offers significant advantages, especially when onboarding new hires, like:

• Increases confidence: With call center soft skills training and product knowledge, agents become more confident handling any situation. It reduces their stress while keeping their morale at peak, resulting in high operational efficiency. 
• Makes agents more productive: Effective training sessions streamline processes for your agents and help them use tech correctly. It empowers them to take calls faster and solve problems, getting more work completed. 
• Reduces turnover: Continuously hiring new people is a hassle no one has time to deal with. Adequate training shows employees that they’re valued and that their success is important to you, improving overall employee engagement. 

Call Center Agent Training Advice

While handling customer inquiries and resolving their issues, your agents risk heavy stress if they’re not adequately trained. 

In a survey of 2,100 call center agents, 87% reported high or extreme stress levels at their call centers, and 60% of these agents felt their training wasn’t adequate to respond to calls adequately and manage this stress. The same survey confirms that more training leads to lower stress levels.

With a lower stress level, your agents are better equipped to deal with customers and resolve their issues efficiently. 

These call center best practices will help effectively train your agents, allowing them to build their skills and provide memorable customer service experiences.

Master the fundamentals 

Your agents need a few fundamental skills to rely on when working directly with your customers. Train them to be active listeners and to pay close attention to what customers say. Ask your agents to paraphrase and acknowledge the issue, making your customers feel heard and valued.

Understanding and caring for your customers’ situations helps you build a strong rapport. Show empathy to improve your interaction quality and transform a negative situation into a positive experience. 

In a study of 1,000 Americans, 58% were willing to pay more if a brand provided a better customer service experience. This means that delivering a better service experience will help you retain customers and generate more revenue through upselling and cross-selling.

Try communicating clearly and avoiding industry jargon as much as possible. Make sure the customer fully understands the solution you’re offering. You need a thorough knowledge of a product or service to get there. The better you know your product, the easier it is to provide resolution. 

While developing fundamental skills, focus on these in contact center training: 

• Technical skills that let them make the most of call center tools. 
• Basic understanding of data analysis.
• A tenacity that makes them resilient to adverse situations. 
• Bilingualism, if you serve diverse clients who speak multiple languages.

Sharpen your call handling skills

Train your agents to deliver a consistent service experience using a script and company rules. They can ask additional questions as needed and listen to customers’ comments. Agents should start by figuring out the main problem to resolve it faster. Then, teach them to communicate the solution in an easy-to-understand way.

Train your agents to follow these communication practices while delivering service:

• Keep your cool: Stay calm, be kind, and try to understand where customers might be coming from. 
• Try to reduce the tension: Assure customers that their problems will be prioritized and give them resolutions as soon as possible.
• Don’t presume: Customers don’t have the same knowledge as your agents and are already frustrated that they can’t figure out a solution on their own. 

Become a productivity pro

Train agents to explore your contact center platform’s features and capabilities that reduce manual work, like interactive voice response and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). This will give them more time to manage critical customer queries rather than administrative busy work. Teach them how to prioritize and address the most critical issues first, helping them effectively manage their time.

Equip your agents with knowledge and create a collaborative environment for faster resolutions. If possible, try building a self-serve knowledge base to concentrate more on the team’s priority issues. 

Related: Mastering Workforce Management in Your Call Center

Tips to Create a Call Center Training Program for Managers

This Forbes Insights Report claims that 74% of consumers are at least somewhat likely to buy based on experience alone. You should set up processes and practices that help your agents deliver memorable and more positive customer experiences in every interaction. 

Lead by example

Let your behavior set the standard for your team. Exhibit excellent communication and problem-solving skills in every customer interaction, and your team will be inspired to do the same while delivering customer support. 

There are a few key areas to focus on while leading a team, including:

• Foster trust: Create an environment where your agents feel comfortable sharing their challenges and seeking advice. Offer constructive feedback when needed. Avoid being critical, and share areas where they can improve.
• Create a collaborative culture: Cultivate a workplace culture that values mutual respect and collaboration. Encourage agents to work together and share knowledge as a cohesive team rather than working in individual silos.

Coach and develop your agents’ skill sets

Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and coaching sessions to deeply understand your agents’ unique abilities and areas for improvement. This will help you create more personalized training courses for your team and coach each rep on the specific areas they need training most.

Based on their skill gaps, create customized customer service training programs and focus on closing those gaps. It’s important to keep celebrating their success with regular recognition and awards. These are powerful motivators that boost morale and encourage new and experienced agents to give their best while dealing with customers.

Optimize team performance

Set clear customer service goals and expectations for your team. Ensure they understand their targets and show them how their contribution aligns with the company’s goals. Measure agents’ performance consistently and help them be more efficient with technology and resources.

Below are a few metrics you can measure to monitor and optimize an agent’s performance:

• Customer satisfaction score: Reveals that the higher the score, the better your chances of customer retention.
• First call resolution (FCR): Measures how many customer issues were resolved on the first call, with most call centers aiming for a 74% or higher FCR rate.
• Average speed of answer: Estimates the time customers wait in a queue before talking to your agents. 
• Average handle time: Determines the average time an agent takes to handle customer calls. 
• Service level: Highlights the number of calls answered in a given time frame. 
• Occupancy rate: Calculates the time an agent is taking calls or doing other productive work. 

Think about investing in reliable call center software. Make sure agents are well-trained to use it in their daily operations. It’ll streamline your team’s workflows, improving operational efficiency and job satisfaction. 

Ultimately, your agents will achieve their full potential to deliver exceptional customer service.  When they’re happy, they’ll stick around, serving customers eagerly day in and day out.

Related Article

12 Key Call Center Metrics & KPIs To Drive Better Performance

Pair Your Training With the Right Call Center Platform

Call center training helps you and your teams stay sharp and motivated. It boosts your agents’ confidence and helps them improve consistently, reducing their stress significantly and making them happier. 

Pairing your training material with the right platform helps teams serve customers to their satisfaction. 

Nextiva spots trends so you can act on data before it’s too late to course correct — providing real-time insight into calls, frequency, quality, customer feedback, and other performance metrics while streamlining contact center management into a single dashboard. 

If you treat your customer touchpoints as separate engagement channels, you need to do things differently.

Smart businesses employ omnichannel customer engagement to power all customer interactions and track customer behaviors in one place. This approach isn’t just about making communication easier for customers (though that’s a big part of it); it’s also about businesses staying competitive and relevant.

Customers expect convenience, speed, and personalization. They want to feel understood and valued, not like they’re explaining their story for the umpteenth time. Omnichannel customer engagement is how businesses meet these expectations, building loyalty and satisfaction.

What Is Omnichannel Customer Engagement?

Omnichannel customer engagement means unifying your brand messaging and voice across all communication channels to deliver a consistent and personalized experience throughout the customer journey.

Customers can interact with your organization through various channels, such as email, phone, chat, social media, and in-person, and still receive the same level of service and support as if they were engaging with your brand at a single touchpoint.

Here’s a typical example: 

Let’s say you’re shopping online for a new pair of sneakers. You see something you like, but you’ve got questions.

You start with a live chat on the product website. Mid-conversation, you have to head out, so you switch to SMS communication. Later, you decide to call the customer service number for an immediate answer. In an omnichannel world, every step feels connected.

The service rep on the phone already knows your issue and what you discussed via chat and text. It’s like your shopping journey is a well-documented map, not a series of disconnected dots.

Benefits of Creating an Omnichannel Experience

Investing in an omnichannel customer experience might seem like overkill at first, but doing so will yield several benefits outlined below.

1. Increased customer satisfaction

About 75% of Gen Z respondents (and 44% of all ages) in a TCN Consumer Survey say that they have shared a negative review online after a brand experience with bad customer service. Over time, these reviews build up to substantial evidence that can ruin your brand reputation. 

A personalized customer experience is exactly what omnichannel engagement offers. It gives you access to up-to-date insights about customer preferences and behaviors across multiple channels simultaneously. Armed with this data, you can customize interactions to your customers’ tastes, meet their expectations, and keep them happy.

2. Improved customer loyalty

According to Deloitte’s Consumer Report data, about 65% of brands with a customer loyalty program plan to invest in omnichannel experiences to drive repeat patronage.

Loyal customers support your business and help you acquire new users through word-of-mouth marketing. They share their experience with your brand on social media and third-party platforms and recommend your product or service to the people in their network.

3. Increased sales and conversions

Omnichannel customer engagement is a key revenue driver for organizations. Deloitte’s 2023 Consumer Report found that repeat purchases, retention, and lifetime value are more than 1.5 times higher (year-on-year growth) for brands that prioritize omnichannel experiences.

Personalization is largely responsible for these results. When you run an omnichannel customer engagement engine, you get a bird’s-eye view of customer behaviors, preferences, and interactions across all your touchpoints. You can use these insights to craft personalized messaging and product offerings that meet each customer’s expectations, making them more likely to convert.

Let’s say a customer visited the shoe section of your e-commerce website but didn’t make a purchase. In that case, you can email them a limited discount on the shoe collection, prompting them to buy.

4. Improved insights into customer behaviors

Omnichannel customer engagement eliminates the guesswork. Instead of making assumptions about customer behaviors, you see their exact actions at every stage in their journey in real time. You can also uncover trends and patterns in customer behaviors, such as the channels they prefer to interact with.

These insights help you refine your customer marketing strategy. Suppose the data shows that customers prefer to speak to contact center agents before a purchase. You can hire and train more agents instead of investing in fancy email marketing software.

5. Increased operational efficiency

Omnichannel customer engagement improves operational efficiency in two ways:

• Automates tasks: It uses tools and software to automate time-consuming tasks. Take data collection and analysis, for example. With multichannel marketing, you need to gather and analyze data from separate channels, which can be time-consuming. On the other hand, omnichannel marketing integrates your data sources into one central platform, making it easier to track.
• Closes the information gap: It increases productivity when an organization has a system that unifies its data and makes it easily accessible to all teams. Teams don’t waste time searching for information or reconciling discrepancies. They can quickly find what they need to complete tasks.

Related Article

Contact Center Management: Strategy, Plan, & Best Practices

Steps for Creating an Omnichannel Customer Engagement Strategy

Now that you understand the benefits of creating omnichannel experiences for your customers, here’s how to create an omnichannel engagement strategy that works for your organization.

1. Understand your customers

Customers are the heart of your omnichannel strategy, so you must start with them. Knowing your customers involves more than collecting high-level demographic information — that’s only a tiny part.

To craft a holistic strategy, you need to know where they hang out, what they like to read and do, and what keeps them up at night in relation to the problem you solve.

How do you gather this information? 

• Conduct market research: Create a market research survey with Nextiva and administer it to your target audience via digital channels like social media. Offer incentives to encourage participation, such as a free consultation or a premium product subscription for a limited period.
  
• Conduct competitor research: Analyze your competitors’ marketing strategies to see which channels and pain points they prioritize. Use SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to review their websites and see the keywords they currently rank for.
  
• Analyze customer data: Dig into your existing customer data to uncover insights and patterns for different customer segments. Analyze website visits, purchase history, survey responses, social media engagement, and other data sources to learn more about customer behaviors across multiple touchpoints.

Once you have all the data, piece it together to create detailed profiles or buyer personas for your customer segments. Each customer profile should include roles, pain points, preferences, and behavioral data.

Related Article

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2. Choose your channels

Don’t blatantly copy your competitors’ customer engagement channels. Instead, to reduce friction during interactions, prioritize the channels your customers already use. If your customers have to learn how a new app works just to reach your contact center, it will negatively impact their experience.

If your audience uses a long list of channels, narrow your focus to the ones where they spend most of their time. For instance, if you’re selling to C-suite executives, you’ll want to focus on LinkedIn because that’s where they typically hang out.

Diversifying your channels is also a good practice. Combine digital channels like social media, websites, and emails with traditional methods of communication like phone calls and physical stores. This not only caters to different customer segments but also ensures there are other ways to reach you if one channel is unavailable.

An omnichannel strategy relies on seamless channel integration. Make sure your chosen channels, whether digital or offline, are compatible and work together smoothly. You can sync multiple customer channels on a single platform, like Nextiva.

3. Develop a unified customer view

Data silos are antithetical to omnichannel customer engagement. That’s why you must create one central source of truth for all customer data within your organization.

This process starts with setting up a standard process for collecting customer data across various sources and channels. Specify how often data will be collected and transferred, which tools will be used, and what will happen at the various stages before the data arrives at the endpoint.

Then, integrate all your data sources — from your customer relationship management (CRM) software to your contact center and customer data platform — into a central, well-organized data repository. Enable data sharing across departments so everyone can access relevant customer information.

4. Craft personalized content and offers

Nearly 35% of participants in Deloitte’s 2023 Consumer Report said they would abandon a brand that fails to create a sense of personalization.

To deliver personalized experiences, you need to segment your customers based on preferences and behaviors. Segmenting is relatively straightforward if you’ve already created customer profiles or personas.

Next, develop unique messaging and offerings for each customer segment. For example, customers with higher spending power will receive prompts to subscribe to your product’s premium plan, while those with lower spending power will receive prompts for the basic plan. Use customer names, purchase histories, and interests in your messaging to personalize communication across all channels.

As customers continuously interact with your channels, you’ll collect real-time behavioral data and use this information to refine personalized messaging and product recommendations.

5. Create seamless customer journeys

Any friction experienced during the buyer journey negatively affects customer acquisition and retention. Your business will lose customers (and revenue) if information gaps prevent prospects from completing purchases.

Make it as easy as possible for your target audience to move through various stages of your customer journey. For this, you’ll need a customer journey map: a visual representation of the customer’s various touchpoints with your brand throughout their interactions, from awareness to purchase and post-purchase.

Optimize each touchpoint for a smooth experience. Ensure you provide all the information and cues the prospect or customer needs to seamlessly move to the next stage. For example, in the awareness stage, you should provide educational materials that give the prospect an overview of your product and features, plus a clear call to action to book a demo.

Offer omnichannel support across all stages, allowing prospects and customers to switch between channels seamlessly without losing context.

6. Measure and optimize

Omnichannel customer engagement isn’t a one-and-done process. You need to continuously track your efforts and processes to see what’s working and what needs improvement. There are several ways to do this, including:

• Run A/B tests for calls to action and messaging to see what resonates best with your audience.
  
• Collect qualitative feedback from customers about their experiences through surveys and one-on-one conversations.
  
• Measure engagement and conversion rates for each channel. For emails, you can track open and click-through rates. You’ll be able to see this information in your email marketing software.

Related Article

18 Customer Engagement Metrics Businesses Need To Benchmark

Omnichannel Customer Engagement in Your Cloud Contact Center

An omnichannel contact center powers all your customer communications — from phone calls and emails to SMS — from one central platform.

It helps you:

1. Unify your view

When you manage customer interactions across several platforms, communication can easily slip through the cracks. Customers’ messages are ignored, or they need to follow up on several channels before getting a response. This is not a good look for your organization.

An omnichannel contact center solves this problem by unifying your customer communication channels. This allows you to manage all interactions via a single interface. Support agents can transfer conversations across platforms without affecting the customer experience.

2. Know your customers

Demographic data can tell you where a customer is from and their level of education. But that’s not enough information to help you understand their pain points and preferences or accurately predict their behaviors.

With an omnichannel contact center, you get a complete 360-degree view of the customer to personalize every interaction. You’ll see how customers behave across different channels, helping you uncover trends and patterns for your marketing and strategies.

3. Route inquiries smartly

Say goodbye to long call wait times. With an omnichannel contact center, you can automatically match customers to the best-fit agent for faster resolution. You can also route cross-channel conversations.

Let’s say a customer reaches out via email but switches to a phone call. In that case, advanced omnichannel routing transfers the conversation to the right call center agent and shares the email thread to give them context for the conversation. In this way, the customer doesn’t have to explain the issue from scratch when they get on the call.

Related Article

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4. Collaborate in real time

In addition to managing customer interactions, omnichannel contact centers have features for internal collaboration among agents.

These tools include a knowledge base for troubleshooting customer issues, internal chat systems, presence indicators to see if a colleague is available for assistance, and the ability to transfer or escalate conversations to other agents or departments as needed.

With these tools, it’s much easier for support teams to resolve customer issues together regardless of their assigned channel.

5. Reach out to customers proactively

Get ahead of sales opportunities and churn risks. As the omnichannel contact center tracks customer interactions, it looks for definitive behaviors that indicate a customer is ready to take significant action. Then, it sends a personalized message to the customer while alerting customer service teams.

Here’s what this looks like in practice: A customer has checked out your pricing page three times but never upgraded their plan. Your contact center can send an automatic push notification in the mobile app that reads: “Limited offer; get 50% off all plans for 24 hours.”

6. Empower your self-service

More than 65% of respondents in Microsoft’s State of Global Customer Service Report said they opt to use self-service channels before engaging with a human agent.

Omnichannel contact centers provide knowledge bases and chatbots for self-service. When a customer contacts support via your website, they receive an immediate response from the chatbot.

The chatbot asks closed-ended questions and routes the customer to relevant resources in the knowledge base, such as video tutorials and help articles, based on their responses. The customer solves the issue independently without waiting to speak with a human.

7. Connect your systems

Omnichannel contact centers don’t only allow you to integrate customer communication platforms; they also integrate third-party data sources like your CRM and CDP for more customer insights.

Take Nextiva, for example. Our AI-powered cloud contact center syncs with top CRMs like Zoho, HubSpot, and Salesforce for a unified experience.

8. Scale with ease

Leverage automation to scale customer support quickly. As your business scales, add new channels to your cloud contact center without increasing headcount at the same pace.

Implement AI-powered chatbots to handle routine queries and use automated ticketing systems to prioritize and route inquiries efficiently, freeing up human agents for more complex issues.

Manage Your Customer Engagement With Nextiva

Omnichannel customer engagement is more than a nice-to-have strategy. It’s the only way to deliver quick and personalized experiences that meet modern customers’ expectations.

If you want to adopt omnichannel engagement in your contact center, you need a strategy and the right tools. We’ve already discussed the first part in detail. Nextiva delivers the second part.

Nextiva offers advanced customer experience management capabilities, including:

• Time-based alerts to ensure you never miss customer updates
• Post-interaction customer surveys to track sentiment
• Workflow automation to increase productivity

Have you ever called a company’s customer service line, only to have the representative know nothing about your previous interactions? Or maybe you’ve spent time customizing your customer preferences on a website and then found they didn’t carry over when you downloaded the mobile app.

These disjointed experiences can be extremely frustrating for customers. They also represent missed opportunities for brands to nurture customer loyalty and trust and, ultimately, impact the bottom line.

That’s why forward-thinking companies are shifting their focus to a unified CX — creating seamless, personalized interactions across every touchpoint. 

Read on to understand what this entails and how to get started on your unified CX journey.

What Is a Unified Customer Experience?

A unified customer experience denotes a consistent, personalized interaction between customers and a company’s sales, product, and marketing touchpoints. These interactions occur throughout the customer journey, from discovery to purchase, onboarding, adoption, and retention. Organizations strive to deliver a unified CX so all customer engagements are orchestrated from a central source.

This differs from traditional CX approaches that treat each channel and customer touchpoint as separate entities.

In a traditional CX, silos emerge where data can’t flow freely between departments. Customers are forced to constantly repeat themselves and reestablish context, thus compromising the CX.

A unified customer experience breaks down these silos by taking a big-picture view of the customer journey. The goal is to meet customers where they are with relevant, tailored experiences — at scale. 

Delivering a tailored, personalized experience builds loyalty, as customers feel understood and valued at every step.

Related Article

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How a Unified CX Differs From a Traditional CX

Here are some key ways a unified CX provides a step-up from typical customer experience approaches:

Cohesive communication across all touchpoints

No matter how a customer interacts with your brand — via website, social media, mobile app, phone call, email, or in-store visit — a unified experience feels consistent and familiar. For example, brand messaging and visual identity align across channels.

Seamless and frictionless transitions

Transitions between digital communication channels and brick and mortar channels are smooth and seamless. Customers don’t have to constantly reestablish context or repeat information when switching between channels. Data flows effortlessly in the background.

Omnichannel support

Customers can start service requests in one channel, like chat, then seamlessly switch to another, like phone, without losing any context or progress.

On the backend, this requires a unified CX platform to bring all of these interactions together in one centralized app. 

Personalized and relevant interactions

Interactions are tailored to individual customers based on data and insights. This leads to more engaged, satisfied customer experiences that feel personally designed.

Data-driven information

Businesses leverage customer data from across the organization to understand customer needs, anticipate challenges, and respond effectively. This prevents having to ask customers for information the company already has on hand.

Empowered self-service experience

This experience offers robust self-service options through FAQs, knowledge bases, and account management portals. However, helpful human assistance is readily available when customers want it.

Biggest Benefits of Unifying Your CX

Taking steps to unify your CX delivers significant benefits, including:

Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty

By providing consistent, personalized interactions across all channels, customers are less frustrated because they don’t have to deal with disjointed experiences when engaging with your company.

Using customer data to tailor interactions also makes customers feel more valued and understood, enhancing their perception of your brand. This consistency builds trust and strengthens your relationship with each customer over time.

This all leads to higher customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, boosting metrics such as repeat purchase rates and customer lifetime value, as happy customers are more likely to continue business with you and recommend you to others.

Boosted business performance

Unifying the experience also directly boosts business performance. Increased customer satisfaction drives higher sales and revenue because loyal customers purchase more. It also lowers churn rates.

Streamlining processes through unified data and omnichannel CX platforms saves time and resources across service, sales, and marketing departments. Enhanced reputation through positive word of mouth and customer reviews also attracts new customers to your brand.

Overall, delivering a superior, personalized CX gives you a competitive advantage that attracts and retains customers.

Faster decision-making

In addition, a unified CX makes decision-making faster and more effective across the organization.

A holistic view of each customer from unified data results in more detailed, comprehensive customer profiles, which power hyper-targeted, relevant marketing and communication campaigns.

It also enables proactive customer service, as you can identify and resolve issues before customers complain on public channels. Customer insights fuel constant optimization because you continuously improve experiences based on data and feedback.

Better employee experience

Other benefits include reduced employee stress, as shared customer context cuts down on repetitive questions and workflows across channels. Consistent brand experiences also reinforce what your brand stands for in the customer’s mind. 

Finally, engaged, empowered employees who can effectively serve customers have higher morale and provide better overall service.

Different Platforms That Enable a Unified CX

A technology stack tailored to your needs empowers you to deliver a unified CX. Below are some key platforms.

Contact centers to support customers across every channel

Contact center platforms, like Nextiva Customer Center, allow you to manage phone, email, chat, text, and social interactions from a unified interface. Features such as call distribution, IVR, routing, and omnichannel management help customer support agents deliver consistent experiences.

CRM systems to know your customers inside out

CRM software centralizes customer data into single records that are available to sales, service, and marketing team members. This powers personalized interactions across the customer lifecycle.

Helpdesk and support platforms to resolve issues swiftly

Helpdesk software streamlines support with features like ticketing, knowledge bases, and self-service portals. This allows efficient, satisfying issue resolution.

Customer feedback and survey tools to listen, learn, and act

Collecting customer feedback through surveys and review sites yields insights to improve experiences. Sentiment analysis and dashboards make it easy to act on this data.

Marketing automation platforms to engage customers throughout their journey

Automating campaigns across email, mobile, social, and other channels allows for the delivery of personalized messages at scale. Workflows based on customer data and behaviors optimize customer engagement.

Digital experience platforms to craft compelling online engagements

DXPs, such as Sitefinity, allow you to create, optimize, and personalize user experiences across your website, mobile apps, online communities, and more. Integrations connect front-end and back-end systems.

E-commerce platforms to power your online storefront

E-commerce platforms, like Shopify and Magento, provide the tools to build customer-centric online stores. Features for transactions, orders, customer accounts, and integrations facilitate unified data and experiences.

Four Steps to Unify Your CX

Here is a step-by-step process to begin unifying your CX:

1. Assess your current state

First, audit your existing experience to identify your biggest gaps — and opportunities. Getting a realistic view of where your CX journey is will help you figure out what kind of tools you need to implement in your workflows going forward.

• Map the journey: Document every touchpoint across channels where customers engage with your brand.
• Evaluate performance: Assess satisfaction metrics, issue resolution rates, and handling times for each channel.
• Identify data silos: Find out where customer data lives within your company and how easily it’s shared between departments.
• Gauge employee sentiment: Get feedback from agents on pain points in current processes and tools.

2. Define your vision

Next, outline your unified CX vision and strategy and what success looks like for your business. Make sure you take every team into consideration when defining the scope of this project.

• Set goals: What do you want customers to feel at each touchpoint? How will experiences reinforce your brand?
• Develop personas: Build detailed profiles of your target audience segments to customize experiences for each.
• Prioritize channels: Focus first on unifying the channels used most by your audience and those of top strategic importance.

3. Invest in the right technology

Your tech stack should help (not hinder) your unified CX. Because these tools are so robust, it’s really hard to remove and replace them if you make a misstep. Make sure you’ve considered all current and future scenarios.

• Contact center platform: A system like Nextiva connects and manages all customer communication channels with robust routing and customer service automation.
• CRM integration: Connect customer data across sales, marketing, service, and e-commerce systems.
• Routing solutions: Distribute inquiries to the best available agents, regardless of the initial channel.
• Self-service options: Deflect common questions through chatbots, knowledge bases, and account portals.
• Communication tools: Centralize customer communication data from phone, email, messaging apps, and more.

4. Empower your agents

Equip agents to deliver excellent, seamless service. The best tools are only as powerful as the people using them. Ensure your teams are comfortable with the new software and processes surrounding it.

• Train on omnichannel service: Ensure agents can smoothly handle customer inquiries across any channel.
• Foster customer-centric culture: Instill across your organization that customer experience is the top priority.
• Encourage feedback: Incorporate agents’ input into improving their tools and processes.
• Monitor data: Use reports and analytics to continuously refine your approach.

Related Article

7 Best Customer Experience Software in 2024: What It Is, Examples, and Pricing

Boost Your Unified CX With Nextiva

As this guide outlines, unifying your CX has tremendous benefits for both customers and your bottom line. It provides a competitive edge and nurtures lasting loyalty.

With its unified cloud communications and contact center platform, Nextiva makes it easy to deliver consistent, personalized omnichannel experiences. 

Seamless integrations, AI capabilities, and automation ensure each customer interaction strengthens your relationship.

Customer experiences can drive people back to — or send them running from — your business, depending on how positive or negative they are.

As more businesses invest in customer experience strategies, your customers will catch on and increase their expectations about what they should get from you. To stand out from a crowded field, you can develop an intelligent customer experience strategy offering better insights and ROI on your CX investments.

In this guide, we’ll explore intelligent customer experiences and explain how to easily deliver them to your customers.

Let’s get started.

Why Is Intelligent Customer Experience Important?

ICX is crucial to differentiate your business in a competitive market and build lasting customer relationships. AI and ML can allow you to dig deeper into insights and customer behaviors and improve your overall CX. Then, you can use those insights to personalize your customer journeys and offer more tailored solutions and experiences.

While you focus on staying competitive, an ICX strategy can help you streamline operations by:

• Automating routine tasks for employees
• Providing self-service options for customers
• Creating detailed reports with actionable takeaways

This frees up time to prioritize your precious resources for the most important and complex issues, ensuring they receive your and your team’s full attention.

Related Article

Contact Center Experience: How To Better Build & Improve It

How Intelligent Customer Experience Works

Intelligent CX leverages AI, personalization, and self-service tools to build upon a traditional CX strategy. Whereas traditional CX still involves sourcing customer feedback and improving customer service, ICX takes it further. It uses data analytics, personalization techniques, and automation to inform how to adapt your CX approach.

By collecting and using data to personalize communications and tailor offerings, ICX can help increase your customer’s trust and satisfaction with your business.

Data analytics and AI integration 

Intelligent CX begins with data collection from different sources, like all the different business communication channels where you reach your customers.

ICX thrives in an omnichannel environment, where all channels are connected and information flows seamlessly between them.

These communication silos might include:

• Chatbot conversations
• Transactions
• Feedback
• Staff notes

Once your ICX solution gathers that data, it processes and analyzes it using AI and ML algorithms. These algorithms can identify patterns, trends, and correlations in the data to gain insights into customer preferences.

Personalization techniques

Customer expectations are always changing. More than ever, they expect you to anticipate their needs and jump to meet them.

As customers expect more personalized, seamless experiences on all their devices, you’ll be more likely to win them over if you can anticipate and meet those expectations. One in three AI strategy implementers thinks anticipating needs and personalizing experiences will give you better luck driving ROI for these solutions.

By continuously analyzing customer data and feedback, you can adapt your marketing and sales strategies (and even your product offerings) to stay relevant in a rapidly changing market.

Automation and self-service options

Automating routine tasks like basic customer inquiries and support requests is a key component of an ICX strategy.

You might automate common operations for:

• Customer support like FAQs, basic troubleshooting, and escalating issues to human agents
• Personalized recommendations for products or content based on past purchases, browsing history, or preferences
• Order processing with confirmation, tracking, and delivery updates
• Appointment bookings and reminders to reduce administrative overhead

The more avenues you create for customers to answer questions independently, the fewer redundant inquiries your support team might have to field.

Related Reading: Advanced IVR: Enabling Customers to Check Order Status

How Intelligent Customer Experience Benefits Businesses

ICX can benefit your business by boosting key customer service metrics that increase your bottom line, like customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, and lifetime value.

According to Forrester, more than half of customer experience leaders are working to improve their capability to analyze and understand customer experiences. That includes building tools and leveraging technology to get there. They’re doing this because intelligent CX can create more opportunities for improving customer satisfaction, increasing revenue, and increasing retention over time.

Let’s take a look at how that happens.

Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty 

ICX can help you provide more responsive, personalized, and effective customer support. When customers feel that they’re heard and understood, you strengthen their ties to your business. This satisfaction is key to measuring customer experience to ensure your efforts are paying off.

One way ICX enhances customer satisfaction is with 24/7/365 support via AI-powered chatbots. These chatbots can handle simpler customer interactions round-the-clock without the need for human intervention. They can level up the issue with an agent if they require a human touch.

That fast responsiveness and ready availability can make customers more satisfied with their interaction and more likely to return to your business again. Satisfied customers are more likely to be brand ambassadors and recommend you to friends and family.

Related Article

60+ Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions to Improve Your Feedback Strategy

Increase revenue and profitability

In addition to increasing satisfaction and loyalty with your existing customers, ICX can also help you differentiate yourself from competitors and attract new customers looking for superior digital customer service.

With data insights detailing your customer preferences, ICX can also help you identify and target new market segments and tailor your offerings to meet the needs of those new segments.

Intelligent customer service can even help grow sales and conversion rates with targeted offers for current and prospective customers. You might be able to encourage customers to make additional, complementary purchases or upsell higher-value products or services.

Improve customer retention and lifetime value

An ICX strategy can help increase your customer lifetime value (CLV) or the customer’s total spend over your entire relationship. This can be because they:

• Purchase more often
• Make more expensive purchases
• Recommend you to others who become your customers

Either way, the insights you gain from ICX can help you encourage customers to spend more over time.

And if your customers are satisfied and spending more money, you’re on the right track to improving retention, a customer engagement KPI that indicates high customer loyalty. Those strong relationships you build with smart data insights and personalized recommendations fulfill your customers’ needs and encourage them to keep giving you their business.

Implementing Intelligent CX

It might be too good of an example, but Amazon is a clear leader in intelligent CX that creates loyal customers who spend more money. Amazon’s AI and ML algorithms create highly personalized and efficient experiences across its platform.

One of the key features of Amazon’s ICX is its recommendation engine, which analyzes customer browsing and purchase behavior to provide personalized product recommendations. This helps customers discover new products they’re likely to want, increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

Amazon also uses conversational AI to provide customer support, answer questions, and give purchase assistance. These chatbots are available 24/7/365 to reduce the burden on human agents while improving response times for millions of customers.

To implement an ICX strategy, you can follow these steps:

1. Define any goals and objectives for your ICX strategy, like improving customer satisfaction.
2. Invest in AI and ML to analyze customer data and personalize recommendations.
3. Develop a personalization strategy based on your data insights for customer interactions.
4. Implement AI-powered chatbots to provide round-the-clock customer support.
5. Manage customer feedback to identify improvement areas and adjust your strategy.
6. Train your team on the new ICX strategy and technologies to ensure you equip them for success.
7. Measure and iterate continuously to adapt to changing customer needs and ensure your strategy remains relevant.

By following these steps, you can create and implement an ICX strategy like Amazon did and improve your customer experience across all touchpoints.

Related: Customer Intelligence: What It Is & How to Implement It

Nextiva: Satisfy Your Customers With Better Experiences

Your customers are hungry for great experiences around every corner. Every chat, email, SMS, or call is another opportunity to create a unique and memorable experience that will drive your customers back to you. With intelligent customer experience, igniting that spark is easier than ever.

Use the power of generative AI and machine learning to collect and analyze all the valuable customer data at your fingertips and usher in the future of customer experience. Then, implement a CX management strategy that harnesses that data to your advantage. That way, you’re prepared to cater to the most exacting customer needs and tailor offerings to new customer sets.

Intelligent Customer Experience FAQs

For more on ICX and what it can do for your business, check out these frequently asked questions.