Omnichannel Customer Service: How to Ace CX on all Channels

Multichannel customer service has long been a standard in the eCommerce industry, but omnichannel customer service is the need of the hour- 

With the increasing popularity of social media channels and chatbots, customers expect to access your customer support through various digital channels like Instagram, live chat, email, or phone support. 

Multichannel support allows you to converse with your customers on these different channels. However, the approach is siloed and very channel-centric, the downside of which is evident. At the core of multichannel support strategy is the belief that a customer sticks to a single channel when they contact your business. 

The reality, however, is very different. Customers tend to switch between digital channels looking for quick or more effective solutions. Nearly half of your customers look for solutions through self-service channels. They switch to live chat or social media channels when they aren’t satisfied. Imagine being greeted by a chatbot that can’t provide end-to-end solutions at this point. You now have a mildly frustrated customer that shouldn’t have to repeat their problem for the third time in a row.

Unfortunately, if you’re still using multichannel customer support, that’s exactly what happens when the customer finally talks to a customer service representative. 

Omnichannel customer service offers a solution to this issue. Omnichannel customer service allows you to integrate all your customer support channels and provides a seamless transition between them. It helps maintain your brand identity across different digital channels and allows you to streamline all your CS operations- 

Related Read: Ultimate Guide on Ecommerce Customer Service

Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Service

Omnichannel customer service is a much more customer-centric approach. It allows agents to treat every customer as an individual instead of a ticket or a query. This has a direct impact on your CX operations but it also leads to-

Customer Satisfaction

To offer omnichannel customer service is one of the best ways to increase customer satisfaction. With a cohesive link between different channels, businesses can collect customer information from different sources and conversations to form a thorough customer profile. It helps improve customer satisfaction in two ways- 

1. The customer data collected by omnichannel tools allows the business to offer personalized support based on their behavior and preferences, which enhances their experience. 
2. It provides a seamless experience when switching from one channel to another, where customers do not end up repeating their problem or starting “a new conversation” every time they switch channels.

Improves Customer Experience with Context

Omnichannel customer service also helps the agents provide more effective and faster service. With access to important metrics like customer lifetime value and order history, customer service agents can make more informed decisions based on previous customer interactions, allowing them to cater to the individual customer’s needs more effectively.

Infact, agents can prioritize customers with higher CLV or even offer discounts to loyal customers based on their order history. Omnichannel customer service provides the right customer context for improved customer experience. here are best ways to improve ecommerce customer experience

Helps to Free up Agent Time 

Omnichannel customer service is a more cohesive strategy and helps improve agent efficiency. When agents have better customer context before their interaction, they are able to lend a more empathetic ear and improve their efficiency in the process.

Reorder Rates

Customer service is often looked at as crisis management, however, it is a great opportunity to strengthen your relationship with customers. Customer support comes in when your customers are facing some issues or have a problem with your service/product. In this moment of disappointment or frustration, good customer service can turn the tables and create yet another moment for customer delight. This impacts the reorder rate as customers are more likely to trust a brand that resolves their issues faster. 

Omnichannel Customer Service Strategy

Omnichannel customer service has great number fo benefits when implemented correctly. It has a bottom line impact on your relationship with your customers, custoemr loyalty and even the bottom-line revenue. Here are some of the best practices to maximize the impact of omnichannel customer service strategy,

Make use of Omnichannel Customer Service Tools

Successful omnichannel customer service is an amalgam of the right technology and customer service flows. To achieve the best results, your business should rely on a support tool that has deep integrations with all your channels- whether it is Instagram comments, emails or SMS, your support tool should integrate all customer conversations from all channels for your omnichannel strategy. 

Apart from this, the right tool will also have deep integrations with your eCommerce platform. Right from Shopify, Woocommerce, or Bigcommerce- agents should be able to pull customer data like order history and most viewed items to make the most of their conversations. This will help them make more informed decisions and even upsell or cross-sell products successfully. 

Train Agents to make use of the Omnichannel Helpdesk

An important benefit of omnichannel customer service is to be able to maintain consistency across different channels of customer communication. It helps you maintain a consistent brand image. This is only possible if your agents have a deep understanding of your brand and its goals. With the right training and tools, customer service agents can act as the vehicle for brand advocacy and create lasting relationships between your business and customers. 

Related Read: Complete Guide on Ecommerce Customer Service Help desk

Implement Self-service Over Chatbots

AI and chatbots have made a significant impact on the customer service industry in the past few years. They’ve made it easier to tap into channels like Live chat and help provide round-the-clock service with lower resolution times. Learn More on How to Setup Live Chat for Ecommerce

When used correctly AI can help reduce the workload on your agents and improve efficiency. However, AI struggles to compete with support agents who are able to provide a more empathetic ear and read between the lines. Due to this, AI and chatbots often deflect customer queries instead of addressing them leading to poor customer experience. AI is beneficial when used as a tool to support the customer support team’s endeavors. 

The best way to do this, however, is by implementing self-service flows that give the customers the power to solve their own problems. This results in a reduced number of support tickets without deflecting any. It helps create a perfect synergy between technology and the human touch and helps you create a better experience for your customers. 

Using Automation

Automation can help achieve the same results self-service can. With the right self-service flows and automated responses to redundant queries like “where is my order?”, you can easily reduce your ticket volume by 40-60%. Identify the most repetitive queries and set up automation for them in order to improve the response time and reduce agent workload without compromising on the quality of service. Learn More on Customer Service Automation.

Omnichannel Customer Support Software

Richpanel is an omnichannel customer service software that improves both the agent and customer experience significantly. Richpanel stands out from its competitors because of its unique take on customer service and its attempt to smoothen out all barriers faced by growing ecommerce businesses. The software aims to facilitate agents to have more meaningful conversations with their customers by-

1. Eliminating redundant tickets such as cancellation and refund initiation with robust customer self-service flows and automation tools. This frees up agents’ time to concentrate on more complex issues.
2. Providing complete customer context to the support agents when they are working on a ticket. This customer data includes- order history, most viewed items, lifetime value, etc. 

What’s even better? Richpanel has a user-friendly interface that mimics social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, making it easy to adapt and use. 

Not only this, it has deep integrations with different eCommerce platforms and apps like Returnly and Okendo, which allows agents to perform tasks like initiating returns or canceling orders through the Richpanel tool itself. This eliminates the back-and-forth between numerous tabs and makes the customer service teams' lives easier.

Conclusion

With increasing online competition and customer expectations, omnichannel customer support has become the need of the hour. It allows you to grow from an online “store” to a brand and make a lasting impression on your customers. It improves the customer experience and helps you build and maintain a brand image that helps generate customer loyalty and recurring revenue in the future. 

Looking for the right Omnichannel customer support tools to meet your needs? Book a demo with Richpanel today!

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