The Oxford Dictionary defines the prefix “omni” as meaning “in all ways or places” and if you were wondering what omni channel communication means, that fact will help you to understand the term. Think of all the ways or places where your customers may reach out to contact you – or attempt to do so.
Of course, they can give you a call. Or perhaps, they’ll interact in live chat or on your website. But if they happen to be in their social media accounts at the time, there’s every chance that they’ll hunt you down on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or any other platform where your business is active. Then, of course, there’s email, and if you’re using mobile chat apps for your business, they enter the picture too.
Omni Channel Communication Means More Than Just Presence
Just responding on the channel where you were contacted doesn’t mean you’re getting your omni channel communication strategy right. Let’s illustrate this with an example.
Your customer first contacted you with an email enquiry. Your team responded and she decided to buy the item. But she had some trouble with the setup, so she picked up the phone and called customer support. Here, an agent helped her to resolve her issue. But then she tried to do something new with your product and ran into some difficulty, so she sent your company a direct message on Facebook.
It’s possible that her earlier interactions with your company could have some bearing on her current issue, and she isn’t going to “feel the love” if the agent who replies to her treats her like a stranger. She’ll be even less happy if she is asked to perform steps she already completed successfully and needn’t do again. Meanwhile, your customer and your service agent are wasting time and your customer is responding with a sigh and saying “Yes, I already did that,” while trying to remain patient.
Wouldn’t it be better if your employee could access every communication that preceded the current one and just pick the conversation up where it left off last time? It certainly would! But how can it be achieved?
An Omni Channel Communication Platform Joins the Dots
As you’ve probably guessed by now, there’s no way your service agents are going to be able to track a customer’s journey without some snappy tools to help them. An omni channel communication platform keeps multiple customer accounts and communication channels in a single place. When accessing it, your customer service agents should be able to see all the information they need to help your customers without taking them all the way back to square one.
It’s like a snapshot of your customers’ history. Everything is connected. Even when customers switch communication channels, you can resume talking to them with all the background info in place. It’s efficient, helpful to both your customers and the people serving them, and it leaves your customers feeling that they were recognised and helped efficiently.
Having an omni channel communication strategy that connects all possible touchpoints is becoming increasingly important to businesses who want to work effectively and give their customers a great customer experience.
Omni Channel vs Multi Channel
It’s entirely possible to be active on every possible communication channel without implementing omni channel communication. Think back to our example. When the customer contacted support, the agent wasn’t aware of communications that occurred through other channels. There’s a “disconnect.” Multi channel communication doesn’t mean continuity. It just means being on a variety of channels. These terms can be applied to marketing too. Omni channel marketing integrates efforts across channels. Multi channel marketing just means that marketing is done on several channels.
Why is an Omni Channel Communication Strategy Important?
We’ve touched on some of the benefits of omni channel communication throughout this article. Let’s bring them all together here. When you implement an omni channel communication strategy:
- It makes your customers feel like they’re getting efficient service.
- It makes it easy for customers to get in touch no matter which platform they prefer.
- It improves the overall customer experience.
- It saves your customer care agents time figuring out customer needs.
- It gives customer service staff greater job satisfaction.
- It allows you to gather data and find out more about how customers experience your business.
- It helps you to develop customer-centric strategies to grow your business.
Is Omni Channel Communication a Costly Investment?
Just how costly is an omni channel customer service centre to set up and run? It depends on how you do it. If you do it in-house, you need staff on standby all the time. Even though your customers will appreciate your insights into their journey, they will still expect rapid response times.
Ever posted a question on a website’s chat that only a live agent can field and ended up wandering off to do something else because nobody responded? How did you like that experience? Maybe you called and ended up listening to hold music for ten minutes before you gave up.
Omni channel communication is great, but it still needs professional customer care agents to run it 24/7. So, you can invest in a platform, you can invest in staff, and still end up with frustrated customers.
That’s why more and more businesses are outsourcing customer care to companies that do nothing else but communicate with consumers. They have the software. They have the people. They can implement economies of scale. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that bargain basement customer care is going to impress your customers. You need something that’s a cut above the average. Ideally, the people who communicate with your customers should be the kind of people you’d hire yourself – or even better than that.
Get gold standard representation of your business’s interests when you choose RSVP’s omni-channel call centre services. We love what we do. We have the platform that lets you oversee customer care while we work on your behalf. Outsourcing shouldn’t mean losing touch with your customers, relinquishing control, or compromising on quality – so we put you in the driver’s seat. And your customers? We put them first! Contact our London offices today. Your customers will be in good hands when you choose RSVP.