5 Ways to Improve Omnichannel Customer Experience

Technology and social media have changed the way consumers are engaging with businesses. Literally, two decades ago, the only way for a customer to interact with businesses was through phone and fax. Do you remember the fax? That must have been rough.

Today, consumers have multiple channels (touch points) where they can contact, interact and even purchase products and services from businesses. It is crucial for a modern business to have a consistent presence throughout all these touchpoints in order to have engagement with its customers.

A consumer in 2022 can interact with businesses on at least 6 channels. These include text messaging, email, phone calls, live chat, and of course, the many social media platforms available.

The problem for many companies, now, is how to synchronize these channels in order to deliver quality, consistent, and seamless customer experience.

What is Omnichannel customer experience

When a business integrates and synchronizes all channels where new and returning customers can engage with its brand, that business has created an omnichannel customer experience. This means that customers can interact seamlessly with the business and expect quality and convenient service no matter what channel they use. 

Omnichannel customer experience should not be confused with multi-channel customer experience.

Benefits of omnichannel customer experience 

So, how does the omnichannel journey improve customer experience?

• Creates familiarity – businesses that deliver a consistent experience across every channel create a sense of familiarity, making it easier for customers to remember them.
• Omnichannel customer engagement helps to understand business gaps – For example, you may notice that while most of your followers are on Instagram, customers currently only have the option to purchase your products on your website meaning you could be losing out on vital sales opportunities.
• Promotes consumer loyalty – Hubspot Research suggests that businesses that provide excellent customer experience services across every channel will increase customer satisfaction and lead to repeat sales. 93% of customers do business with brands with great customer service.
• It promotes consistency – omnichannel customer experience helps to create a consistent experience for customers across every channel.
• Increase sales opportunities – Consumers have different preferences when it comes to the platforms they utilize. This is especially true when looking at social media platforms. Instagram clients might not necessarily be website clients and vice versa. Omnichannel engagement can help businesses cast a wider net and be able to reach more clients. 

How to improve Omnichannel Customer Experience

1. Optimize for mobile

Mobile phones are the new billboards. People research, compare, and buy from their mobile phones now more than ever before. Today’s businesses have gone to great lengths to engage consumers via their phones. Unfortunately, the statistics paint a grim picture when it comes to mobile engagement. 

• 90% of customers say their customer service experience on mobile was negative. 
• 52% of customers say that a poor mobile experience makes them less inclined to do business with a company.

Factors like slow loading times of mobile pages and difficulty in navigation contribute overwhelmingly to these statistics.

 

Solution: 

• Get a developer who understands and appreciates webpage optimization for mobile. Collaborate with them on creating webpages that can be viewed and easily navigated with a mobile device.
• If you work with content creators, it is imperative they understand how to create content for the different platforms that your customers engage on. For example, videos for YouTube might not necessarily integrate into a Facebook platform.

2. Improve social media engagement

This is a no-brainer. Most experts will tell you that clients, especially first-timers, expect businesses to respond within 30 minutes of their queries – weekends included. This can be even less for social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

If you do not prioritize prompt response, clients (I cannot emphasize this enough – especially new ones) will be frustrated and more than likely look elsewhere.

So, please train your employees to provide quick and effective solutions to significantly improve your customer relationships.

Creating a customer-centric culture in your business can also go a long way in improving your social media response time.

3. Invest in customer self-service

Customers today prefer to find information and fix problems by themselves without directly contacting customer service.

Here are some simple ways to improve self-service

• Use data to consistently update the FAQs page
• Ensure the website has an active live chat
• The blog/information section of the website should be regularly updated with customer experience content.
• Invest in ‘how-to’ videos on YouTube.
• Consistent Q&A sessions on social media.

It is important to note that excellent customer satisfaction experiences increase brand loyalty and this in turn increases repeat clients.

4. Content is king.

• The content that exists on your channels needs to have consistent messaging.
• The content needs to adapt to the platform – especially video content.
• It is crucial that the content serves the need and interests of your clients. This is actually the most important use for content.
• Be mindful of the buyer’s journey. Content should be created for different stages of the buyer’s journey.
• The content has to be relevant and adhere to the business brand.
• There has to be a predictable schedule for generating and publishing content across all the channels.
• Use SEO tools to understand buyer’s search intent and create content that serves that need.

5. Focus on building customers relationships 

Happy customers are your number one affiliate marketers. Make them happy and they are more likely to recommend your business. Building customer relationships that create emotional connections with your brand makes you stand out from the competition. Companies are now investing in customer retention as much as they do with marketing. 

The higher value of returning customers, as well as the high cost of customer acquisition and increasing pressure from global competition, has led many companies to increase their focus on nurturing and protecting their existing customer base.

Information a company receives from repeat customers is also usually crucial in understanding your customer dynamics and if the data is used correctly, it can lead to new business.

Summary

Consumers are spoilt for choice when it comes to channels they use to engage with businesses. It is now up to these businesses to meet them on these channels and provide engagement-worthy content. There is high demand for platforms that seamlessly and effectively connect brands to consumers across all the available platforms. Our friends at Acquire have a very insightful blog article on the available options of omnichannel tools.