Social media is the new place for users to talk about their suggestions, and when we say suggestions, it also includes talking about products and services. It's not uncommon today for users to complain about a product or service on social media, but how you approach the complaint matters a lot.
We have seen a lot of brands that don't have a presence on social media, and it leads to increased defamation, while other brands turn that complaint into a query and take the customer into the customer support loop. It not only prevents further defamation but also helps the brand retain its customers. Do you know what this approach is known as? It is called an Omnichannel approach. But what exactly does it mean? Let's understand everything about it in today's blog.
What is Omnichannel Customer Support?
First, let's understand what Omnichannel customer support means. Omnichannel customer support is a customer support approach where there are many communication channels integrated with each other. It is different from the traditional approach to customer support where you only have inbound and outbound calls for customer service.
As technology has developed, there are multiple communication channels that are more relevant than phone calls, SMS, and emails. However, that doesn't mean that these channels are of no use. To better understand it, let's take an example. Let's say Shyam had a problem for which he contacted the customer support of a company. He used their toll-free number to contact them, and after the call, he was told to share some screenshots of the app to help them understand his problem. Since he can't share the screenshots via phone call, he was told to mail them to customer.support@xyz.com.
After some time, he got a reply to his mail and also a text SMS that his problem had been resolved. This whole setup, where a single complaint was taken and resolved without the need to make a new complaint, is called omnichannel customer support.
Nowadays, we also have social media channels like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. These channels can also be integrated into this approach to make it even easier for the customer to reach the brand.
Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Support
Here are the five most important benefits of this CS approach, which makes it an ultimate contact center solution.
Better Customer Service
Have you noticed how quickly some companies can respond across different platforms? That’s possible due to an omnichannel contact center. They respond quickly to customer questions and offer personalized help as they have multiple channels to distribute the load. It leads to faster and better complaint handling. All this results in happier and more satisfied customers, which turns into increased loyalty towards your business. But, this isn't the only reason for faster responses.
Valuable Insights
It is very important for companies to understand what customers really want. So, how do they do it? Contact centers gather data from CRM systems and other sources to provide a complete view of customer behavior and preferences. It helps businesses make better decisions and use predictive insights and feedback.
Better Data Collection
Today data matters a lot as personalisation can help you earn more than your expectations and its implementation needs data. The more data you have the better and personalized offerings and marketing you can create. But there's a fine line between ethical and unethical data collection methods. And data collection through your own contact center lies in ethical means. So, you can collect more data with an Omnichannel contact center like customer’s phones, emails, and social media handles compared to a traditional call center.
Consistent Branding and Messaging
With omnichannel customer support, businesses can ensure consistent branding and messaging across all communication platforms. No matter which channel a customer uses, whether it's email, social media, or chat, they receive the same information and tone. It brings trust in the brand and this uniformity helps create a cohesive experience, boosting customer confidence and brand loyalty.
Boosted Sales
Contact centers play an important role in boosting sales. When you help a customer with their query the trust that they might have lost in you reinforces. This way the customer who would have left your brand stays with you and keeps providing you business. And this is one of the most important principles why companies provide customer support.
Challenges of Omnichannel
See, having an omnichannel approach indeed has many benefits, but it has some challenges too. So, let's now flip the coin and discuss the drawbacks of this approach.
Initial Investment
Investing in the Omnichannel setup can be a challenge as you have to put your capital into the call center, AI chatbot subscription, API service charges, and many more at once. However, it is important to make these investments as otherwise, you may not be able to set up an Omnichannel customer support system.
Integration
In the example above, we talked about how there was no need to explain your query from the very start and just continue from the same point with the new channel where you left off at the previous channel. This capability is called integration and is often possible with a reference number. However, the real tech behind it is integrating one channel with another. It can be a task to do so, and sometimes you may even have to change your CRM for better integration.
Employee Training
While call centers have been around for a long time, these new channels have recently joined the sprint. That's why there aren't a lot of programs to train employees for these channels. It creates a scarcity of capable people. But this can be changed by having well-made SOPs. But how do you know if your SOPs are good enough or not? Here comes the next problem.
Omnichannel Contact Center Auditing
Checking SOPs, analyzing agent performance, and call monitoring all come under the quality audit of call centers. And the same goes for contact centers. But, the reality is that auditing contact centers with so many channels is not only hard but also time-consuming. While
Call Center Customer Service can be audited easily, you may not find a good fit for your contact center audit. The reason is, of course, the unavailability of the right tool at the auditor's end. But you shouldn't worry, as we have got you covered.
How to Audit Omnichannel Support?
Auditing Omnichannel customer support isn't a big deal if your auditor has the right tool. But what is the right tool? QAViews is our standalone tool for auditing customer support centers, be it a traditional one or an omnichannel one. With this tool, our auditors generate a comprehensive report for all the channels you have. It allows our auditors to do random call sampling, check the SOPs for all the channels, and much more. Moreover, if you find any inaccuracies in the report, you can use its rebuttal feature for a quick look.
To Sum Up
An effective omnichannel customer support system can transform your brand's reputation and customer loyalty. While the benefits are clear, ensuring the system runs seamlessly requires top-notch auditing. Auditing all your contact channels helps you create better SOPS, sync between all channels and identify the gaps between the communication. With tools like QAViews, you’ll stay ahead, identifying gaps and improving customer experiences across all channels.
