10 Tips For Omni-Channel Customer Support

A study done with 50,000 shoppers found that 73% of customers like to shop on more than one channel. 

Another study found that 90% of customers want a simple, easy, and consistent buying experience no matter what channel they choose.

Real world statistics like these are hard to ignore. So how does your company manage its omni-channel experience?

In this article, I’m going to explore highly practical and useful tips any business can implement to improve their omni-channel experience. Read on to find out more.

1. Promote self-service options.

What’s the single best way to improve your customer satisfaction rate across all your support teams?

By having fewer tickets to respond to!

You can do this by helping your customers help themselves. A simple self-service portal can answer all of your customer’s questions and more. 

It doesn’t even have to be something complex. A simple FAQ page on your website can resolve problems before they even enter your ticket queue. And best of all, your customers don’t have to wait for their issues to be solved. They solve their issues on their own, and quickly.

2. Understand where your customers stand.

It’s always important to understand where your customers are in their life-cycle so you know the best way to help them. 

Look at the history of your customer contact. Look at where the longest response times have been, and where the shortest response times have been. What can be improved? Your goal should be to identify where your customer is in their purchase life-cycle and help them move forward from there.

3. Reduce social media response times.

Social media is one of the biggest tools you have to improve your omni-channel experience. 

But there’s one big problem: Customers expect their problems to be resolved within hours of initiating contact. At all times.

Even during weekends and during off-hours. So what do you do?

You allocate your support teams accordingly. 

It’s important to have a significantly bigger social media team when compared to other teams. This massively improves public image, response times, and is a simple way to get a big boost for your company image while using very few resources.

4. Use chatbots.

A live chat feature is an incredibly efficient and engaging way to improve omni-channel experience. The more engaged your customers are when visiting your website, the more likely they are to buy and be satisfied. 

Chatbots are available 24/7. They’re invaluable for addressing common questions, and can also be programmed to up-sell customers on demand.

5. Improve your mobile friendliness.

The number of people making purchase decisions on their phones is increasing every year. 

Search engines also actively hurt the website rankings of businesses that aren’t easy to navigate on phones.  Thankfully, this has a simple fix.

Making your website mobile friendly is very inexpensive, and gives you a tremendous boost to your SEO and overall customer satisfaction.

6. Text your customers.

In a world where everyone is chasing high-tech solutions to their problems, the simple SMS gets ignored. 

A text message is a very inexpensive and simple way to boost an omni-channel experience. Imagine a typical customer experience. Look at all the different touch-points where they can make a mistake. Maybe they abandoned their shopping cart purchase. Or maybe they forgot to renew a subscription. 

You don’t need to wait for them to log in to remind them to take action. Sending them a simple SMS is a very quick way to engage your customers.

7. Improve hands-on training.

The marketplace keeps changing, along with the expectations of the average customer. How do you keep up with everything? 

Train your staff so they understand what their current expectations are at all times. Encourage them to take on additional responsibilities even if it’s not in their specific area. This lets you stay ahead of the competition and evolve.

8. Leverage customer behavior.

To improve omni-channel support, you need to understand what your customers want first. All purchase decisions are driven by basic primal needs, as listed below:

  • Money
  • Security
  • Status
  • Prestige
  • Health
  • Fitness
  • Praise
  • Recognition
  • Power
  • Influence
  • Popularity

Make sure your strategy addresses at least one of these when designing your overall experience. 

9. Reward successful resolutions.

Here’s something few businesses understand: Your internal business culture drips onto your customers.

If you train your employees in a dry, rigid, and inflexible manner, then your executives will carry over that energy to their customer interactions as well.

It can be incredibly hard to track overall customer satisfaction in large systems. So reward desirable behavior the moment you see it. This ensures it’ll happen more often.

10. Kaizen — The art of constant improvement.

“Wisdom on the battlefield triumphs over any strategy crafted in the war room,” they say. 

If any piece of your omni-channel strategy isn’t working, change it. The more iterations your strategy goes through, the better your omni-channel experience becomes. 

So constantly look at what you can change, and what can be improved.

Actively seek feedback. Ask your customers and employees to rate their experience through anonymous channels. This unfiltered feedback is worth its weight in gold. Actually listening to your customers and accommodating them will give you results even when strategies in the boardroom are headed in the wrong direction.

Conclusion

A successful omni-channel strategy relies on improving every single aspect of the customer experience. Customers want a seamless experience. They want to be able to hop on social media, jump to voice support, visit your store and carry on with their shopping experience while engaging with as many different touch-points as possible. 

Studies show that 63% of customers love brands not just because of their products, but because of the overall experience they go through when making a purchase[3]

And this experience is something you can leverage to make your company stand out. Done right, a successful omni-channel experience leaves your customers with unforgettable memories.

Author Icon