How to Implement a Successful Omnichannel Support Strategy: Key Considerations and Tips

According to an Incisiv report from 2022, only 15% of customers find it easy to find support when they explore products online. This is a sobering statistic, given that 76% of customers expect businesses to anticipate their needs and expectations. 

This mismatch of expectations is why many businesses are turning towards an omnichannel support strategy. The omnichannel support strategy focuses on providing seamless communication across all available channels. Let’s explore it. 

What is Omnichannel Customer Support?

As we pointed out, omnichannel customer support is focused on providing a seamless support experience across all channels. Practically, this means a centralized support system that can answer questions through Email, website, social media, and other channels.

Since you need a centralized platform to manage these channels, businesses must implement tech (like a Generative AI chatbot) to capitalize on it.

Another thing to remember is that an omnichannel strategy uses multiple channels, which differs fundamentally from a multichannel approach. 

Multichannel vs. Omnichannel

Let’s understand the core differences between the Multichannel and Omnichannel customer support strategies.

Omnichannel Strategy	Multichannel Strategy
Continuous conversations across channels	Silo-ed conversations across channels
A similar brand tone is maintained for each channel	Different brand tones based on channel
Focused on allowing customers to switch channels whenever they need.	Focused on containing customers to one channel
Needs deep tech integrations	Doesn’t need separate tech integrations

Now that we understand the strategy, let’s know how it can help customer service teams. 

Benefits of an Omnichannel Support Strategy

A successful omnichannel support strategy helps businesses by:

1. Measuring the Customer Intent Across Channels

A consistent problem for businesses lies around finding a product-channel fit. It is challenging to understand which channels invite the most customers. 

Since an omnichannel customer service strategy focuses on communication across channels, it becomes easier to understand customer behaviors across these channels. 

So, if customers ask high-intent questions on one or two channels, these channels can be selected for more marketing investments. Similarly, this also points out the customer’s preferred channel for support, and businesses can prioritize customer journeys on the platform for better customer experience (CX).

Improving CSAT Score

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores are quantitative measures of customer satisfaction. This can indicate the quality of support, overall product performance, and journeys in particular channels. 

As we said at the beginning of this article, customers are demanding more personalized communication across channels. With omnichannel support and customer behavior analyses, it’s possible to provide personalized support at scale. 

This personalization leads to better customer experience and improved CSAT scores. Plus, according to a Gorgias report, a 1% increase in CSAT scores leads to a 4% increase in revenue, so this improvement is also great for your topline. 

Faster Resolutions

When customers don’t have to travel between different channels to find the answer to their problems, they are solved faster. 

So, if the full suite of customer support tools is available across email and social media, customers on either channel can have their problems solved with the same ease. Also, since the continuity of messages is maintained, customers don’t have to re-explain their problems at each stage. 

Both of these factors result in faster customer service resolutions and customer satisfaction. As a bonus, businesses get access to a consistent data store in the centralized system used in the customer service process. 

The benefits of an omnichannel strategy derive from the channels it uses. Let’s briefly look at popular channels used for this strategy. 

Popular Customer Support Channels

Some of the most popular channels that businesses leverage to provide customer support are:

• Live Chat – The self-service channel powered by generative AI and machine learning models has recently become popular. These channels provide a way for customers to seek help 24/7.
  Most repetitive queries are contained within the live chat environment, and complicated queries are handed over to a human agent. 

1. 1. Social Media – Instagram, Facebook, Line, and other social media platforms have messaging infrastructure that can be an excellent tool for one-to-one support. These are also channels that customers often use for product discovery, so high-intent customers also use these channels for information on these channels. 
   2. Email – Email is often the first line of communication for support. This is one of the places where customers describe their problems in detail and is a crucial part of the support infrastructure. 

• Voice and Video – Voice and video calls are a great way to provide support when a demonstration is essential. This is where you can provide additional support to customers and guide them through the solution of a problem with a live demonstration. 

• Support Forums – A community-driven forum is the support tool of choice for many open-source projects. This allows experienced users of your products to provide direct support to new users. 

While this is not an exhaustive list of customer support channels, they are popular for businesses. However, simultaneously being live on all these platforms requires some adjustments, so let’s discuss them. 

Key Considerations

Since an omnichannel customer support strategy involves many moving parts, it also causes some acute problems. These are:

1. Increased Ticket Volume

Since you’re increasing the level of access for customers, your support ticket volumes would increase with an omnichannel presence. Thankfully, many of these queries will be repetitive (up to 60-80%) and can be automated. 

You can implement a generative AI chatbot or other self-service channels to handle the increased number of tickets. 

2. Maintaining Continuity

One of the primary features of an omnichannel customer support team is that the conversation needs to be seamless. This becomes difficult when agents have different support styles or lack information about the complaint. 

Consistency can be maintained using AI tools that summarize and create boilerplate responses. Chatbots can maintain a consistent brand tone and transfer relevant information across channels to maintain continuity. 

3. Managing Integrations

Not only does your new centralized platform for omnichannel support need to integrate with multiple channels, but it also needs to talk with your existing tech stack. 

To maintain this, always check the available integrations with your vendor. Try to prioritize no-code and native integrations to ensure smooth operations. 

4. Managing Costs

Scaling your customer support team with every single channel you add is difficult. Not only is the increased human capital challenging to maintain, but it’s also difficult to account for the costs. 

One of the ways to manage costs is to reduce the volume of tickets altogether. A self-service version of your customer support channels can reduce the number of tickets you generate daily while freeing up your existing human resources. 

5. Data Privacy

While most of these channels offer some form of encryption for messaging, it’s not always concrete. Limit your omnichannel strategy to platforms that provide end-to-end encryption so your customer’s PII data remains safe. 

Similarly, if you choose AI-based self-service, ensure your vendor follows all the data practices by HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC2.

Once you’ve taken stock of these considerations, here are a few tips to help you implement an omnichannel strategy. 

4 Key Tips to Implement an Omnichannel Customer Support Strategy

We help many brands automate their omnichannel support presence, and we’ve figured out that the following tips work best. 

• Analyze Your Customer – Your customer’s needs dictate the implementation of this strategy. Choose the key channels they use and prioritize them, try to learn about the format of support that makes them the most comfortable, and work towards creating an intuitive journey for them. 

• Choose the Right Tool – As we pointed out in the earlier section, your choice of tools will influence how your strategy performs. Most modern businesses choose AI platforms that automate your messages with a centralized ticketing system.
  For best results, prioritize vendors by the number of integrations, ease of use, and data security features.

• Train Your Tech & Team – Since introducing new technology to the heart of your customer support function, you need to invest in training. Train your colleagues to manage the technology and incorporate funnels and processes into the technology to make it intuitive to your team and customers.
  If you’re using AI, train it on your documents and website pages so that it has a concrete understanding of your processes.

• Monitor and Adjust – The best-laid plans can fall flat in the real world. Focus on the CSAT scores and customer complaints. Adjust your omnichannel strategy as you grow your brand.

These four tips will help you navigate omnichannel support without any worries. Remember, most businesses will have multiple iterations around this, so focus on finding the right fit by adjusting your strategy over time. 

Conclusion

As customer expectations evolve, businesses must provide seamless and consistent support across multiple channels.

In our experience, businesses need to focus on the following as they implement this strategy:

1. Recognize the benefits of omnichannel support, such as improved CSAT scores and faster resolutions
2. Identify popular support channels like live chat, social media, email, and voice/video
3. Consider crucial factors like increased ticket volume, maintaining continuity, and managing integrations
4. Implement best practices such as analyzing customer needs, choosing the right tools, and continuous monitoring and adjustment.

An omnichannel strategy can help businesses increase their revenue and create customer delight. However, remember to realign the strategy with the business goals as you approach it. 

Author: Uttiya Roy

Author Bio: A Content Marketing Manager at Kommunicate, Uttiya brings in 11+ years of experience across journalism, D2C and B2B tech. He’s excited by the evolution of AI technologies and is interested in how it influences the future of existing industries.