Your competitors are just a click away from your customers, you must provide a personalized customer experience so that your customers happily stay loyal to your brand. And Omni channel customer service is a key driver for customer satisfaction..
Customers connect emotionally to those brands to whom they can easily connect via any channel (phone, email, social media, web chat, etc). And it’s not just customers who benefit from it, even businesses can fulfill their orders from anywhere.
As per Internet retailer companies having a strong Omni channel customer service strategy have customer retention of an average of 89% as compared with 33% for companies with a weak strategy.
Omni channel customer support strategy that leading brands use
Starbucks email strategy
In 2018, Starbucks had 60 million loyal groups of customers who were actively enrolled in Starbucks rewards, but those customers didn’t have any digital relationship with the brand.
Therefore Starbucks implemented an Omni channel retailing strategy. They forced a digital relationship by providing free wifi in exchange for an email ID. For that, they offered a solution where users would get a 10% off code in exchange for their email address.
The newly acquired email addresses were then used to drive retention and purchase frequency.
They sent unique triggered emails with discount offers on specific products which expired on the same day and were available during a certain timeframe.
The strategy helped Starbucks to drive digitally registered customers into stores during non-peak hours.
Spotify uses social media support for a better customer experience
Days are gone when you had to simply send a request for your favorite songs and wait for them to play on the radio or television. Or save some bucks to buy cassettes and CDs to listen to your favorite song.
Today, you can stream your favorite songs online or offline via mobile phones, computers, and smart TVs. And Spotify has been one of the major drivers causing a shift in the way we consume music.
Not just that, their outstanding customer support has won them the Webby Award for social media customer support.
Spotify leverages its product on social media like Twitter. Those Spotify users who reach out to the Twitter handle @SpotifyCares get to listen to thematically appropriate songs selected by the support team. Not many brands have the opportunity to play their songs on other social media platforms.
Not just that, Spotify offers a knowledge base where consumers can find up-to-date contents about the product and service whenever they want without having to wait for the support team to fetch a suitable solution.
National Geographic
National Geographic employed a conversational chatbot who would interact like Einstein. The bot was created to promote their new show Genius. It would reply to the users with information about the show and other interesting facts.
The bot made the users feel connected by answering professional and personal questions in real-time in a human and friendly way.
As a result, there were 6-8 minutes of average conversation, 11 turns per conversation, and 50% of user re-engagement. Thereby the user-friendly chatbot strategy did a wonderful job.
Case studies of Omni channel customer service enabled companies
AirHelp
AirHelp is a famous brand that advocates and protects passengers’ rights. By now it helped more than 16 million passengers with delayed, canceled, and overbooked flights.
Challenges
Having a support team in over 35 markets who spoke 16 languages, AirHelp faced problems in monitoring their performance through their social media profiles with a single dashboard.
They wanted to reduce the agent’s response time with proper ticket assignment but couldn’t assign the ticket to the right expert due to the language barrier.
Solution
AirHelp Implemented an Omni channel support strategy and integrated social media and messaging apps.
They added 846 response templates to improve response time.
Incorporated one dashboard to evaluate all metrics of customer service, assign resources based on real-time data, and measure team performance with the help of KPI.
Result
- It helped AirHelp to improve their response time on Facebook by 65%
- Their customer service coverage expanded.
Datamatics
Datamatics is a technology company that builds data-driven business intelligence solutions to digitally transform itself with the help of Robotics, AI, mobility, cloud, and advanced analytics.
Challenges
The clients asked for better customer service. The lack of efficient customer service resources largely affected the customer experience. Therefore Datamatics wanted to provide exceptional customer service to their ever-growing client base which in return would help in the growth of a digital marketplace business on an expandable platform.
Solution
Datamatics focused on customer service infrastructure and deployed Omni channel customer service (phone, email, chat support) and dwindled issues related to service and scalability.
Result
- The quality output increased to 98.33%.
- The live chat answer response improved by 98%.
- There was a reduction in email TAT by 4hrs.
- Feedback rating on Amazon virtual marketplace improved to 5.0.
Walmart case study
Walmart is a very famous retail corporation from the USA, headquartered in Arkansas. It’s well known for operating discount department stores, grocery stores, and a chain of hypermarkets.
Challenges
Founded in 1969, Walmart grew exponentially by opening large stores in the suburbs, streamlining its supply chain, and offering high sales at low profits. But the rise of E-commerce giants like Amazon lured away their customers. As a result, they were losing customers.
Solution
Studying the crisis, in 2010, Walmart opted for the Omni channel strategy. Having a large network, they made the most out of it by focusing on improving customer satisfaction and increasing sales at existing stores. Started Offering online grocery delivery service which delivered the food ordered online from stores to customer’s doorstep. Also, it allowed customers to receive products purchased online at the store parking via ‘online grocery pickup’.
Result
Walmart’s performance returned to life. Their online sales would now compete with Amazon.
How to implement omnichannel support for your business?
Identify customers
Before you implement Omni channel support for your customers, you need to identify your prospective customers first. You can’t sell your product to just anyone and everyone. You need to understand who your idle customers are going to be. You need to have a target audience. It makes the Omni channel strategy more effective.
You should be aware of your customer’s demographic, customers’ behavior, the preferred mode of communication, buying habits, and various other preferences.
Digging into the minute details helps you assist your customers better.
Conduct audience segmentation
Once you have a detailed understanding of your target audience, categorize them into groups. It helps you offer relevant products to the right customers.
Customers get frustrated when they receive irrelevant content. Segmentation helps you offer personalized service.
And if you think segmentation is a tough task. Worry not. Most Omni channel marketing automation solutions carry out rule-based customer segmentation based on the target audience you’ve set. It can be based on gender, customer loyalty, previous engagement level, geography, etc. The solution allows you to even customize the persona if you want to expand them.
Prioritize channels and devices
Be it using your website or speaking with support agents over the phone, every channel has a unique role to play. Customers perceive your brand as per their experience. There are innumerable channels. Each of them provides a unique customer experience. The channel you select to bring your customer strategy to life is equally as crucial as the messages that you communicate on their platforms.
However, selecting the right support channel that mixes right with your organization is not that simple. You’ll have to be mindful while selecting the right channel.
For instance, individuals in traditional sectors may expect human interaction, while individuals working in fast-moving technology sectors may prefer a high-level response via devices.
Use analytics to understand your audience’s preferences and select the right channel.
Integrate Omni channel
Integrating all the online and offline touchpoints is the toughest part of adopting Omni channel customer support.
Smooth integration of different channels forms the foundation of the Omni channel strategy. Failing to integrate the channels successfully will harm your business.
You’ll have to carefully select the right set of technologies to smoothen the process.
Chat360 helps you unite different channels that involve tracking your customers and their shopping experience across every channel and connecting it with others without having to use heavy codes or programming language.
Train your team
Customer support staff are the pillar of customer service. Since social media is expanding, smartphones are upgrading, and websites are updated every day, the support team should be able to adapt to the change and understand current expectations.
Therefore proper training plays a huge role in keeping the staff updated. Make sure your support agent understands Facebook, Twitter, and other channels, along with contact center AI software, to offer a flawless customer experience.
Measure your performance
While implementing an Omni channel customer support strategy, you should also define the key performance indicators (KPI) that measure the success of the strategy. Accessing your omni channel strategy is critical to understand what is working and where improvement is required.
With several channels in the mix, it can be difficult to evaluate them and compare their results. And for that, you might need tools to study all the cross-channel data. Therefore keep an eye on reports and analytical data as they give you an idea about which way your campaign is heading.
Also, only measuring the efficiency is not enough. Your Omni channel strategy should be flexible enough to adapt to continuous growth and development.
Conclusion
An omni channel strategy streamlines your communication channels, enabling your team and customer to work smoothly between them. It promotes Quality service that improves ROI. It’s no wonder most enterprises are investing in providing omnichannel support.
Thereby, follow best practices for perfect omnichannel customer support. 24/7 availability and outstanding mobile service will boost sales.