Welp MagazineCustomers are less and less willing to be patient with issues related to customer service. There are always going to be reasons that people will need to reach out to you, and consumers expect prompt service with attention to detail. Everything from returns to complaints needs to be handled correctly to secure return business from your consumers. Even support for IT is best handled through omnichannel troubleshooting and resolutions these days.
When you are looking at providing proper customer support these days, you need to make it simple for people to get the help they need quickly and reliably. This might mean allowing them to switch from a customer chat to a call or helping them to get seamless access to escalated tiers of care. You should never make anyone wait for the help that they need, and omnichannel customer service can deliver these results for your needs with ease.
If you are ready to learn more about what is Omnichannel customer service and what it can do for your business, you need to read on!
What is the Difference Between Multichannel and Omnichannel Customer Care?
When you are set up to use multichannel customer care, your users might interact with a unique team when they are on the chat function versus when they call in. They might also be escalated through many tiers of support to finally speak with someone who can handle their concern. This can lead to frustration for everyone and slow-downs along the way to trying to resolve the issue at hand.
With omnichannel customer care, you will be able to have your teamwork with customers through all of the various ways that they reach out for help. This means that the same team handles all kinds of customer concerns, whether they come in through chat or they are calling in for help. Everything from calls, chats, and emails can be routed through the same customer care experts under this system. This means that each person that is working with a client will have the experience needed to resolve the issue in a timely fashion or to escalate readily if need be.
When your team is all working together on resolutions for customers, they are much more likely to get people the care they need right away and without holdups or accidentally misrouted calls. This results in an improved customer care experience and a happier customer.
Omnichannel customer service also allows you to reach out to customers and consumers via email, which can be quite effective. People are busy, and they are not often able to step away from their desks at work to take a call. If you are able to send an email, you will be able to access the customer that you need to talk to without bothering them and putting their guard up.
What do I Need to Provide Omnichannel Customer Service?
You will need to provide a few things to get access to customer care through a single channel setup. You will need to make sure that you have a mobile-friendly service that can be used on smartphones as well as computers. You will also need to have a chatbot function in place that can convert to live chatting with ease.
If you are still allowing phone calls for service, you will need to be sure that the customer care experts who are handling cases that are coming in through virtual means are also able to take calls. Sometimes people will have issues with being able to stay on a call with you due to being in the car or in a place with poor signal. You can direct them to the chat if this is the case without losing their information or worrying them that you will not be able to help them.
It is actually quite easy to arrange this kind of system for your customer care needs, and you will be surprised at how much simpler it is to serve customers with this kind of system. Once you have the kinks worked out, this kind of customer care process will work really effectively for everyone. This is a system that works very well for IT businesses since more SME, or expert support staff is already very tech-savvy.
What About Self-Service?
Self-service can greatly improve the turnaround time that people experience for simple issues that they might have. Your chatbot can handle a lot of these concerns, and if you have FAQs and other articles and guides online to help people resolve simple problems, you will save your consumers and your team a lot of energy every day.
Many questions that come into call centers are simple things such as, where do I mail my return or what are your customer service hours? These questions can easily be deflected to the automated answers of your chatbot or to a simple FAQ. When you use a quality self-service option, you will keep basic calls from clogging up your phone trees or your live chatting function.
How Will Omnichannel Customer Service Help My Business?
Omnichannel customer service will make it easier for your customer care teams to do their jobs, and it will help consumers to get the help that they need right away. This improves the customer care experience and helps your team to be able to interact with people that are still in a good mood and willing to help work with the team to resolve their issues.
When you use simple solutions like the chatbot and the self-service care mentioned earlier, people are able to avoid calling trees and other things that often feel like a waste of time. You will be able to help them to get simple answers without waiting on hold or having to look through your whole website for the information that they need.
There is really no downside to omnichannel customer care, and you will find that every part of your business processes will be improved by switching to this customer care model.
