What are some omnichannel strategies that have helped improve customer service at your company?
To help you determine the best omnichannel strategies for your company, we asked business owners and marketing professionals this question for their best advice. From providing fun and educational blogs to using Facebook’s cross-platform messaging, there are several omnichannel strategies that may help your company improve customer service and drive more conversions.
Here are 13 omnichannel strategies to improve customer service:
- Provide Fun and Educational Blogs
- Ability to Compare Quotes
- The Power of Conversational AI
- Staying Uniform and True to Brand Voice
- Improve Response Times
- Integrate Online Experience With Physical Store Visit
- Perform A Content Audit
- Learn What Your Customers’ Preferred Channels Are
- Personalized Email Support
- Use Live Chat
- Engage With Us Via Social Media
- Connect With An Expert Online
- Facebook’s Cross-Platform Messaging
Provide Fun and Educational Blogs
Some marketing efforts can be too dry or academic, which is why we offer fun and educational blogs instead. These blogs provide useful information about destinations and RV life without ever being boring. Plus, visitors can go straight from the blogs to relevant web pages. This makes them a useful tool to drive traffic and gain new customers armed with useful knowledge about where they want to go and what we offer.
Randall Smalley, Cruise America
Ability to Compare Quotes
Our customers understandably want the lowest rates possible, and we work to make that happen. This is why the ability to compare quotes on our website is so important, as it gives customers the tools to make an informed decision without going anywhere else. When customers visit us and compare quotes, they know they’re getting the most coverage for their money. This is something they really appreciate.
Chris Abrams, Abrams Insurance Solutions
The Power of Conversational AI
We have used conversational AI to revolutionize self-service and elevate our brand. With the detailed analytics and insights provided by AI-based customer service solutions, we dig into what customers are calling for most and be proactive in providing solutions. With a better understanding of why customers are reaching out to customer service, we have made provisions to improve the experience. We focus on providing automation resolution options that keep a personal touch. With the help of an omnichannel chatbot, we are able to provide consistent customer support to our users right where they need it when they need it. Whether it’s WhatsApp, Facebook, our official website, or mobile app, our omnichannel chatbot connects us with our users everywhere.
Hamna Amjad, Physicians Thrive
Staying Uniform and True to Brand Voice
While each platform is different and has its own set of unspoken rules, it shouldn’t deter brands from being uniform in their communications with customers. By staying true to your unique brand voice, you’re less likely to confuse customers, since many of them will follow you on multiple channels and there shouldn’t be any discrepancies in the image that you portray. Doing this has helped us better our credibility and trust with clients since they know who we are and what we stand for.
Riley Beam, Douglas R. Beam, P.A.
Improve Response Times
Most users have clear expectations when it comes to when they expect an answer after initiating contact or sending a support ticket. A study from Convince & Convert concluded that nearly a third of respondents expected a response within no more than 30 minutes. Even large enterprises take an average of three hours to respond, so smaller companies with fewer resources truly have their work cut out.
To optimize our response times, we provide five different contact forms. Rather than giving customers a single phone number or email address to make contact, which can create a serious backlog, we develop an immediate understanding of why a person is reaching out based on the channel they’re making contact from. For example, someone might have a business opportunity that they want to share. Or, they could come from the media, reaching out in hopes of scheduling an interview. They could simply be a customer in need of support. This small change has improved our response times considerably.
Mike Grossman, GoodHire
Integrate Online Experience With Physical Store Visit
One omnichannel strategy that helped improve our customer service is integrating the online experience with physical store visits through our website. Customers can pick and save the brands of products that best fit their needs on the website, and the list carries over to our physical store database to give them a seamless customer experience if they want to see them upfront. It cuts the time needed to go over the long lists of brands as long as they have options narrowed down in their website account.
Nunzio Ross, Majesty Coffee
Perform A Content Audit
Auditing content is an omnichannel strategy that helps us improve customer service. At least once a year, we comprehensively evaluate all of our content, including phone numbers, web links, and chatbot to make sure these are correct and updated. This way, we could learn critical insights into our strengths and weaknesses. Determining what we need to work on helps us deliver high-quality customer service and ensure a smooth transition to our marketing channels.
Michelle Ebbin, JettProof
Learn What Your Customers’ Preferred Channels Are
The most crucial element of an omnichannel strategy is knowing where the customers will go first when they need help. You can do this by collecting the data about your customers’ favorite means of communication and asking them to leave feedback after their customer support ticket is resolved.
Also, make sure to offer self-service options, like an extensive FAQ section with the most common questions, AI-powered chats, support workflow automation within the mobile app or community forum on your site. The latter is sometimes the preferred channel for customers because they get first-hand information from previous/repeat customers.
From my personal experience, AI-powered chats are good for general queries and not so much for specific issues customers face. But since the need for these chats is individual to every company, it’s best to test if your customers like this self-service option before implementing it for good.
Salman Aslam, Omnicore
Personalized Email Support
Providing customer service by email has helped us build stronger customer relationships and grow our business. Although we handle customer queries via telephone, our customers are busy professionals who find it more convenient to contact us via email. We have worked hard to personalize our email interactions to ensure that our customers feel that they’re dealing with a human, not a faceless company. A customer service email shouldn’t be regarded as an anonymous transaction, it’s a conversation between two humans. To help personalize interactions we ask our agents to introduce themselves to customers by name and show their faces on their profile pictures.
Dean Kaplan, Kaplan Collection Agency
Use Live Chat
One omnichannel strategy that has helped both improve customer service and streamline our sales process at our company is to provide a live chat feature on our website. This allows potential customers to speak directly to us in real-time. That, in turn, helps to solve any questions they may have quickly and efficiently. Additionally, it gives us an opportunity to build a relationship with them from the beginning. Since we implemented this strategy, our sales have increased by 15% and customer satisfaction has improved as well!
Jonathan Baillie Strong, Spotlight Podcasting
Engage With Customers On Social Media
The ability to engage with us on social media is one of the great omnichannel strategies that help keep people happy. If there are questions or concerns, people can just get online and get in touch. All of the information they need is on Facebook. With a simple click or tap, they can send us a message that we’ll respond to as quickly as possible.
Kenna Hamm, Texas Adoption Center
Connect With An Expert Online
With so much business being conducted online, you need to make the most of the opportunities modern technology offers. In line with that, it makes sense for us to offer multiple online avenues to our products and services. The chance to “Connect with an Expert” enables customers to get in touch with us on their schedule. They can easily get the information and guidance they need. It’s a vital customer service tool.
Allan J. Switalski, AVANA Capital
Facebook’s Cross-Platform Messaging
We use Facebook’s cross-platform messaging that merges Instagram and Facebook chats as one of our omnichannel strategies. This is very beneficial for us since the majority of inquiries that we get come from these two channels. More often than not, customers reach out from both platforms. This integration allows for a smooth and seamless conversation no matter which platform the client is using at the moment.
Ian Sells, RebateKey
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