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Our Guide to The Omnichannel Approach

admin — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 09:50:17 +0000

It’s a brave new world with information and communication at our fingertips. Anything you want to know should only be a click away. But is it? Most of us will identify with the frustration that occurs when it isn’t.

On the other side of the coin, businesses are eager to share information. They want people to know about what they do, and they want to get leads and conversions. More than that, they want to retain clients and get referrals.

Whichever way you look at it, businesses need to be where their customers are, whether that’s in store, online, or on social media. As for the ubiquitous mobile phone, it’s the tool of choice for both you and your customers. Ignore this fact at your peril!

With new ways of doing business, new terms come to light, and “omnichannel,” is one of the buzzwords you may have heard. So, what’s omnichannel, and how and where should you be applying the omnichannel approach?

Omnichannel Definition
A Broader View of the Omnichannel Approach
How Omnichannel Solutions Help Different Industries
Differences Between Omnichannel and Multichannel
Omnichannel Customer Service
Design an Effective Omnichannel Customer Journey
The Omnichannel Customer Experience
Omnichannel Communication
Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel Retail
Omnichannel Analytics
Omnichannel Trends

First, Let’s Define Omnichannel

The online dictionaries have been busy, but as so often happens when you’re trying to produce a neat, concise definition, a lot of info gets lost along the way. Search engines support a definition that says the omnichannel model consists of integrating different types of shopping: online, using mobile, and visiting physical stores. But there’s much more to it than that.

“Selling” is a bigger word than it may look like on the surface, and getting people interested enough to buy is only the first step. Let’s trace the process and see how omnichannel methods apply.

A Broader View of the Omnichannel Approach

To begin your customers’ journey, we have omnichannel marketing. Here, businesses try to reach their prospective clients using all media at their disposal. It can be an expensive business if you’re going to try it in its purest form, which would mean using absolutely every type of media to gain exposure. But you can trade off omnichannel vs multichannel instead. Can’t afford TV ads? No problem, hit social media and AdWords hard. Use all the online options possible, and you’re working the omnichannel vs omni-digital difference.

But that’s just the first step in selling. Next up, we want to catch our clients where they are, and sell to them. Your physical location or locations can’t really do this, but your digital ones can. After all, just about everyone surfs the internet using computers and phones. Once there, they won’t just be visiting websites: there’ll be plenty of time spent scrolling through social media. Link your marketing posts to your online store, and purchases from all over the world come flooding in, at least, if you play your cards right.

But somewhere between awareness, a buying decision, and the checkout, there’s another area that needs the omnichannel approach. That’s customer service and support. Find your customers across channels; sell to them wherever they may be; but you’d better be sure you have customer service available on every channel your customers use, and it had better be available 24/7. Let’s not forget that the customer’s journey isn’t over until he or she is satisfied, so that means after-sales service too.

Now, let’s put this in the context of a global marketplace. Impossible? Capital intensive? It doesn’t have to be. Let’s dip our toes in the water with some examples of how you can apply the omnichannel approach. But first, let’s look at the benefits.

How Omnichannel Solutions Help Different Industries

No matter what industry you’re in, your customers are either your top promoters, or your most influential detractors. Happy customers mean even more customers, and that’s why omnichannel solutions can help you to take your business to the next level. We already know that various platforms can help organisations to get more customers. But once they’re converted, customer experience and service often forms the basis on which your business is judged.

A lot of the most successful companies in the world are using the omnichannel model, and a look at the big names famed for their successful application of this strategy could turn into a long one. Think of names like Starbucks, Ikea, and Amazon. But it doesn’t end there. Energy companies, pharmaceutical firms, and the automotive industry are just three examples of industries that are leveraging the omnichannel approach to boost sales, improve the customer experience, and gather data.

Did we mention data? Communication is a two-way street. You need to know what your customers are thinking and saying: what you’re doing well, and what you need to do better. Keeping your finger on the pulse across channels helps you to know what matters to your customers. As you can imagine, this requires some pretty smart software to process all that information and dedicated staff to capture it.

Differences Between Omnichannel and Multichannel

Most businesses these days are multichannel. The “channels” are the “places” where their businesses are active. For example, they have a store or stores, but they also work through their websites, make and take phone calls, send and receive emails, and are active on social media. Perhaps they throw a few extras into the mix, for instance, a mobile app. You can visualise a multichannel model as a diagram with your business at the centre, and all the different channels you use surrounding it and linking to your business.

Omnichannel is similar to multichannel in that you use multiple channels to market your products, talk to customers, and sell goods. But there, the resemblance ends. Take the mental picture we created when discussing multichannel. Now, place your customer in the centre, and overlap all the channels. The first big difference? Your customer is at the centre of things! And, because all the channels overlap, your customers can switch channels and simply resume their interaction with your business right where they left off.

Omnichannel Customer Service

If your business sells to people using several channels, it makes sense that customer service must be available and consistent across all of them. Omnichannel customer service, like omnichannel sales and marketing, doesn’t work in platform or channel-based silos. Businesses that adopt omnichannel communication for customer service use software to link each customer’s current situation to past events regardless of the communication methods customers chose to use at the time. This allows customer service personnel to provide highly relevant assistance based on previous interactions. It benefits both the customer and the business.

One of the secrets to great service is understanding the path leading to a request for assistance and the individual customer’s context. It saves time, and if more than one interaction is needed to achieve a desired result, your service agents and customers don’t have to navigate the whole support process from scratch. Think about the old-fashioned interactions you enjoy with small brick-and-mortar businesses where you’re a “regular” and staff recognise you instantly and know what you want. There’s an existing relationship, and these businesses know its history. Scale that up to a business with thousands of customers. Can you help customers as if they were old friends? With the right technology and the right people to use it, you can.

Design an Effective Omnichannel Customer Journey

When designing omnichannel customer journeys, your first step is to consider all the routes that customers follow before making a purchase. Take it as a given that they’ll skip between channels and research the journeys that customers most often follow first. Now that you know which channels customers are likely to use and how they might jump between channels, you can look at optimising touch points so that each one matches the stages of the customer journey your customers may follow. With data showing how customers shop, you can start working on ways to move prospective customers through the sales funnel towards conversion. Keep their experiences in mind throughout. People like reminders and recommendations but they don’t want to feel overwhelmed by them.

With thousands of customer journeys to follow and multiple channels to link, you’ll need the right technology to process and record customer information. You might also want to look for ways to persuade customers to add to the channels they’re already using. For example, you might encourage them to share an email address or download your app. Data shows you what customers do, but your most valuable information comes from the things customers say. Use simple feedback forms to see how you’re doing. For instance, customer effort scores tell you whether customers found the purchasing process easy and intuitive.

When surveying customers, allow them an opportunity to comment on their experiences in greater detail. The few customers who take advantage of this are a source of valuable info. Don’t forget to look at customer support requests – they could indicate areas where your customers struggled.

Information is only as useful as the action that follows. Use your data to create a veritable freeway towards conversion. Your goal? Make it extremely easy for customers to make that all-important purchase.

The Omnichannel Customer Experience

Customers may send an enquiry on any one of several social media channels where your marketing messages are seen, follow up with an email, and then contact you over the phone. The omnichannel customer experience is determined by how seamlessly a company can integrate all these experiences and communications so that customers aren’t treated as if they were “strangers” every time they switch channels.

With businesses fielding many communications across multiple channels, integrating all communications from each client into a coherent whole can prove challenging. Top omnichannel customer experience tips will always begin with the methods used to organise communications.

The people responsible for interacting with clients need to understand the customer journey so far in order to respond appropriately. The alternative is to place customers in a position where they must repeat themselves, going through a history that is apparent to them, and that they feel should be obvious to a business that claims to prioritise its customers.

Needless to say, trying to organise customer communications across multiple channels without the help of advanced software is all-but-impossible. Improving the omnichannel customer experience begins with leveraging technology, but doesn’t end there. Technology is only as good as the people who use it and the methods they employ. So, besides having the capacity to integrate communications across channels, businesses need people with a strong understanding of the business and the ability to join the dots across communications histories to understand their customers’ current situation properly.

Omnichannel Communication

To help you understand what omnichannel communication means it helps to 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.

Just responding on the channel where you were contacted doesn’t mean you’re getting your omnichannel 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 omnichannel 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.

Omnichannel Marketing

There are some pretty eye-watering omnichannel marketing definitions out there, but in practical terms, it simply means being where your customers are, no matter where that is. So, you have a market. It’s active on Instagram. It uses Facebook. It likes to surf the web and might send a website enquiry or email. Maybe your preferred customers are younger and like Snapchat or TikTok. Or, they like to talk over the phone. Maybe some of them visit your business in person too! It’s not unheard-of, after all. Now, imagine a situation in which your business has mastered all these possible opportunities to market itself to potential customers. That’s omnichannel marketing!

If you’re “everywhere,” you get exposure to a bigger audience. But to get the best out of your omnichannel marketing efforts, you need to decide where your audience is likely to take you seriously. That’s easy enough to determine. But apart from being where your customers are, what other benefits can you hope to realise? The key lies in the “omni.” They commented on Facebook. They sent you an SMS, they emailed you, and every time, you knew who they were, what they said to you before, and how you responded in the past. This is startling to look like a relationship! Could it be love? They’ll certainly form a positive impression of your efficiency! In a nutshell, we’re looking at a wider audience and better opportunities for relationship building if you can manage an omnichannel approach effectively.

Omnichannel Retail

The omnichannel retail strategy aims to unify customers’ experience across all the channels your brand uses. It rests on the principles of visibility, personalisation, measurement and optimisation. Its goal is to craft experiences that will appeal to all customers regardless of their individual interests, how they interact with your brand, and whether they switch channels in the process. As a simple example, imagine that you see a product you’re interested in while browsing your socials. You decide to move to the website and you instantly find the product you were interested in. You’re also shown some related products. But you notice that there’s a physical store near you. You can order the things you want and pick them up in store, saving on delivery costs or qualifying for a discount. It’s a done deal and you’re happy with the results.

So far, the store has led you through a simple yet positive and consistent customer journey spanning three channels. But it doesn’t stop there. For example, you may have decided to download the store’s app and joined its mailing list. On these two additional channels, you receive offers you’re genuinely interested in and you buy even more products. As you can imagine, the retailer benefits, but so does the consumer. However, without the synergy between the different channels you used, it wouldn’t have happened at all. To achieve this, the retailer implemented a conscious omnichannel strategy.

Omnichannel Analytics

Omnichannel analytics attempts to play the sleuth, helping businesses to know the route customers follow before committing to a purchase. Your business can use that information to make each step easier, pleasanter, and more compelling. It can also analyse and personalise individual experiences, creating a “conversation” between your business and prospective customers instead of allowing each interaction to occur in isolation. Omnichannel analytics are reported by synthesising information across platforms and sales channels and presenting them in one place. Instead of focusing on channels, they focus on customers, attempting to determine what leads them to purchase, and what acts to deter them from purchasing. Getting these analytics requires the use of specialised software or tools.

Omnichannel analytics can help you improve customer experiences, help with inventory decisions, and indicate strategies that improve profitability. You’ll be able to fine-tune your marketing strategies by understanding customer preferences and motivations better. You may identify bottlenecks and sticking points, giving you an opportunity to remove obstacles to purchasing. Besides this, you might spot elements which, though they don’t directly make sales, are essential contributors in customer decision making.

In short, you’ll be able to plan marketing, selling and fulfilment with a focus on what works for your business and its customers. Instead of just trying to guess, you’ll know where your resources can best be allocated. And, you might be in for some surprises along the way. Trying to gather, synthesise, and analyse all this data by hand isn’t practical, but with software doing the legwork, you’ll get better insights from your data and you can even follow it in real time.

What are the Trends?

With the power of omnichannel approaches being harnessed by so many big names and brands, it comes as no surprise that building on this success is the trend. Contactless selling is big. Social selling is huge. And, despite the breadth of this approach, social networking and one-on-one contact adds a personal touch. That might sound like a tough call when you’re dealing with thousands of contacts a day: even more so when you’re doing this across the globe. But it really is possible to be omnichannel, yet give customers a feeling of connection.

In part, customers can gain this sense of belonging by supporting brands and companies favoured by friends and family members. But interactions between individuals and the companies they deal with seal the deal. That’s where RSVP provides an inspiring example of how companies can keep it personal despite adopting a ubiquitous, omnichannel approach.

Personal Service in an Impersonal World

RSVP understands that your omnichannel marketing and sales efforts are only as good as your ability to “walk the talk.” When your customers contact you, they may be happy with a chatbot for simple queries, but they’ll only get frustrated if all they can get is generic responses.

There are times when customers want to talk to a person, and that person must be a good listener and a strong communicator. They don’t want to repeat themselves either. If they already called, emailed, and messaged via social media, they want whoever they’re dealing with to pick up the conversation where it left off. Omnichannel is big, but small is beautiful when it comes to the customer perspective. They don’t want to feel like “just” another customer.

Needless to say, this means having a call centre that’s equipped with some pretty advanced Customer Relationship Management Software that gives you the complete 360 degree view of your customer. Showing every touchpoint via every channel, with operators equipped to resolve any query, regardless of how the customer prefers to interact with your brand. It also means having brand representatives who are able to speak your customers’ language, both literally and in the figurative sense. And since data gathering helps you to improve, you need feedback on recurring issues.

For most companies, having an in-house call centre that checks all the boxes is a tall order. Try it and the personnel costs alone are likely to be very high indeed. Outsource it cheap, and your customers are sure to notice. You’ve probably experienced this first-hand, so we’ll skip the details here. Suffice to say that it’s painfully obvious.

However, it’s entirely possible to outsource your omnichannel call centre seamlessly – provided your chosen communications company prioritises quality, both for you and your customers. At RSVP, we have the tech and the people you need to make your customer interactions memorable, and for all the right reasons.

Looking to market your business across multiple channels? Looking to sell anywhere, anytime with revenue just a click away? Ensure that your contact centre is ready to support your efforts. Need help? Let’s talk omnichannel business! Call us today.

Read our guide to customer experience.
Read our guide to customer service.

The post Our Guide to The Omnichannel Approach appeared first on RSVP Call Centre.

Creating an Omnichannel Customer Journey

admin — Mon, 13 May 2024 07:39:04 +0000

As the owner or manager of a highly competitive business, you know that finding customers and keeping them is important to your success. Back in the day, you’d have chosen a high street location, offered excellent in-person service and may have done some print advertising. With the advent of social media and online shopping, you may have added more channels to your repertoire: an ecommerce website, active social media presence and maybe even a mobile app.

With all these channels working for you, you now have a multichannel presence, but you know that customers skip between channels. Can you create a unified omnichannel customer journey that leads clients to conversion across all these channels? Before we look at how you can map the customer journey and use omnichannel marketing at its best, let’s look at an example.

Omnichannel Customer Journey Example

You’re browsing your socials when you spot an advert that interests you. You take a closer look and add it to your wishlist thinking you might get back to it later on.

The next day, you receive a message reminding you about your wishlist item, so you head for the ecommerce website to check out the product again. Along with your wishlist item, you now see several other suggested items that seem purposefully selected to appeal to your preferences.

You make your selections, and you see that you can either have the item delivered or collect it from a nearby store. Eager to save on delivery charges, you drop by to collect your order which is ready and waiting for you.

You’re impressed because it was so easy and convenient to shop. Will you buy from this business again? Absolutely! Did all of this occur by accident? Definitely not! The business in our example used an omnichannel customer journey map to provide you with the very best in personalised service. But how did they make it all happen?

How to Design Effective Omnichannel Customer Journeys

1. Learn how customers shop

Your first step is to consider all the routes that customers follow before making a purchase. Take it as a given that they’ll skip between channels and research the journeys that customers most often follow first.

2. Optimise touchpoints

Now that you know which channels customers are likely to use and how they might jump between channels, you can look at optimising touch points so that each one matches the stages of the customer journey your customers may follow.

3. Plot your sales funnel

With data showing how customers shop, you can start working on ways to move prospective customers through the sales funnel towards conversion. Keep their experiences in mind throughout. People like reminders and recommendations but they don’t want to feel overwhelmed by them.

4. Choose a combination of tech tools strategically

5. Analyse your data and get customer feedback

Data shows you what customers do, but your most valuable information comes from the things customers say. Use simple feedback forms to see how you’re doing. For instance, customer effort scores tell you whether customers found the purchasing process easy and intuitive.

6. Make it even easier

7. Keep up the good work

There’s always room for improvement, so keep on analysing your data and listening to customer voices. Remember, tech-savvy omnichannel shoppers buy more and are more likely to remain loyal.

Benefits of Prioritising Omnichannel Customer Journeys

You can probably imagine how prioritising omnichannel customer journeys benefits you and your customers. However, there’s nothing like facts and figures to confirm that gut feel. Interestingly, even supermarket shoppers are often omnichannel shoppers.

According to Supermarket News, 77 percent of customers use digital apps to make their shopping lists and nearly as many will use tech to check product availability before shopping. Those who use several channels to shop spend 50 percent more than those who don’t.

Among the most important touchpoints, supermarket customers identified reliable stock levels and reports, checkout experiences, and pickup or delivery. Of course, for more complex businesses, there may be even more crucial touchpoints to consider. At the same time, this example serves to illustrate the benefits of purposeful implementation of the omnichannel experience. For example, the same digital tools you use to help you make sales and gather data can help with stock monitoring and sales forecasts.

Ready to Join the Dots Between Channels? RSVP Can Help!

Despite all the digital processes and interactions with which customers engage, direct, person-to-person contact remains one of the best ways to uncover how customers feel about doing business with you. Instead of just looking at what they do, you can listen to what they say. But for most businesses, managing 24/7, multilingual customer service in-house is simply too costly and too complex.

What omnichannel businesses need is a fully scalable outsourced service that operates around the clock – one that not only helps customers, but gathers vital data businesses need to revisit customer journeys, and redesign them to eliminate the need for assistance.

As an omnichannel customer support service, it may seem strange that we work with you to gather the information you need to reduce the need for calls and contacts – but that’s exactly what we do! It’s also what your customers really want: a means of doing business that they can easily navigate without help. Remember, by the time they need in-person advice, they’re already frustrated and need very professional treatment to overcome their impatience. After all, they’ve already engaged in a digital customer experience that fails to deliver what they want from it.

That means that your customer support agents need omnichannel information too. Have the customers they’re helping reached out before? How did that go? What might be their next step from here on in, and can service agents preempt the need for further callbacks? With the right tools at their disposal, omnichannel customer service and support acts, not only to mollify customers who got stuck in your sales funnel, but to gather the information you need to craft better omnichannel customer journeys.

Are you ready to rise to the challenge? Work with our London–based omnichannel support services. Gain a better understanding of your customers, their journeys, and their pain points with RSVP while retaining customers you might otherwise have lost. Let’s talk business and help you take yours to the next level with omnichannel journeys that work!

Read More About Omni Channel

The post Creating an Omnichannel Customer Journey appeared first on RSVP Call Centre.

Understanding Omnichannel Analytics

admin — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 08:20:19 +0000

How do customers experience your business? It can be hard to know! For example, a person might notice a product on social media, search for information on Google, visit a physical store, chat with representatives online or over the phone, and visit several websites before making a purchase using a store app. The bigger the purchase, the more likely they are to do some legwork, and the harder it is for companies to know what their customer journey was and how they experienced it.

What is Omnichannel Analytics?

Omnichannel analytics are reported by synthesising information across platforms and sales channels and presenting them in one place. Instead of focusing on channels, they focus on customers, attempting to determine what leads them to purchase, and what acts to deter them from purchasing. Getting these analytics requires the use of specialised software or tools. Additional uses include:

Predicting demand per product
Troubleshooting stock levels
Recommending strategies for cost savings and increased sales
Unifying data to allow teams to function cooperatively

Why are Omnichannel Data Analytics Important?

You’ve already spotted that omnichannel analytics can help you improve customer experiences, help with inventory decisions, and indicate strategies that improve profitability. That’s important enough to begin with, but there’s more to it than that.

You’ll be able to fine-tune your marketing strategies by understanding customer preferences and motivations better. You may identify bottlenecks and sticking points, giving you an opportunity to remove obstacles to purchasing. Besides this, you might spot elements which, though they don’t directly make sales, are essential contributors in customer decision making.

Tools for Omnichannel Analytics

With a growing number of businesses understanding the importance of omnichannel analytics, software companies are in a fierce battle to produce the ultimate analytics tools. Some are producing tools focussing on specific areas. Others try to offer all-in-one solutions with greater or lesser success.

To choose the right omnichannel analytics tools for your business, develop a set of selection criteria rather than simply opting for anything carrying the omnichannel tag.

Begin by considering what data you hope to synthesise, what you hope to find out, and what you want to achieve.
Evaluate the type of reports the tools generate, and whether they present data in a form that provides the insights you’re seeking.
Consider ease of use. If your tools are too complex to work with, they’ll have limited usefulness.
Decide whether the cost of these tools justifies the benefits of using them.

How to Implement Omnichannel Analytics

Tools and information are only helpful when they are used properly. Once you’ve chosen your toolkit, your first step will involve allocating responsibility and ensuring that the people who are to use the tools know how to do so. Questions to answer might include what insights you want, how frequently data should be monitored, where and how results will be reported, and who is responsible for recommending and initiating actions that flow from the insights gained.

Since reports and conclusions are only as good as the data sets from which they are drawn, you’ll also have to consider your approach to data governance. Besides this, the information you gain, and the way you react to it will impact people across the organisation. They may have perspectives that can contribute to decision-making and execution. For example, your marketing team might use omnichannel marketing analytics and determine that a particular product deserves promotion – but that impacts production and fulfilment. Form cross-functional teams that allow for coordination.

Monitor performance to see whether you’re achieving what you set out to do and make adjustments along the way. Are the tools providing useful information? Are reports being used to make good decisions? Could you do even better?

Challenges for Implementing Omnichannel Analytics

Customer Journeys Can Be Complex

Even when entire customer journeys happen online, they can be very complicated. For example, you may not know how individual customers became aware of your products, especially if they don’t initially interact. Part of their journey may be happening offline, and the channel they use to purchase your products may not be the one that initially drove the sale. Always be aware that you might not know every single step of the customer journey, even though you have omnichannel analytics that help you pin down some of the most important components.

Data Integration and Accuracy

The tools you use must integrate data from multiple sources – and for the conclusions to be relevant, accurate data is crucial. However, accuracy is only one factor to consider – synchronisation of data is also important. For example, you may benefit from synchronising customer data with competitor-related data, inventory data, and more. And, of course, you don’t want to start over with a full range of new systems, so compatibility with the software you already have also comes into play.

Data Privacy and Security

Your aim is to develop personalised customer journeys, serving your customers better. But beware of falling afoul of data privacy laws. If you’re going to gather data, your customers are entitled to know what information you’re gathering, how you’re using it and why, and they are fully entitled to decline. With data comes responsibility for its security, especially if it includes sensitive information like names and contact details.

Unifying Channels and Eliminating Silos

It’s not just information that has to be consolidated for omnichannel analytics to be useful. The channels themselves must work together. For example, if you sell from a website, a brick-and-mortar store, and an app, and communicate with customers on social media, decisions impacting one of these elements may affect the others. And, since customers switch channels freely, you must be sure that their experiences across channels are consistent.

Managing Change

Just having synthesised data is useless. Taking action based on data implies change. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of a few tweaks, but at others, it will involve significant changes to the ways in which you work. Managing change is rarely easy, and the bigger the changes, the harder and costlier it gets.

AI and Omnichannel Analytics

AI is key to acquiring conclusions and recommendations based on the huge amounts of data that go into omnichannel analytics. Apart from collecting and analysing data, it draws attention to patterns, helping you to gain further insights into customer behaviour. Omnichannel historical analysis helps AI to make important predictions, for example, sales projections. It helps you with elements of strategy too. As an example, it can use market info to recommend pricing strategies. On a smaller scale, AI automates individual customer experiences, leading customers through the purchasing process based on its analysis of their behaviour.

Although there are obstacles and imperfections to navigate, AI-driven omnichannel analytics can help you make data-driven decisions, improve customer experiences, and help you grow your business.

Human Interactions and Omnichannel Analytics

No matter how far tech takes us, interpersonal interactions remain among the most important sources of information for your business. It’s not just what people say, but what one can infer. For example, if people consistently contact your support agents, regardless of channel, with specific requests for product information, or particular issues, it’s a call to rethink and improve specific components that go into customer journeys.

In all the excitement about automation and AI, never forget that what you’re ultimately aiming for is a better understanding of human behaviour. Although technology can uncover some of the information you’re looking for, the things your customers say and the solutions that satisfy them are best gauged in one-to-one interactions. It’s data you can’t afford to miss out on, and you need this information to guide your decision-making.

At RSVP, we monitor our clients’ omnichannel communications around the clock, dealing with customer enquiries and calls for support across platforms. When people reach out, they’re at a particularly delicate stage of their customer journeys. We give them the service they need to turn their experiences into positive ones, and we use advanced software to capture the data you need.

Struggling to support your omnichannel retail efforts? Get our London-based omnichannel call centre on your side. Your customers get unparalleled service and support, and you get the all-important analytics and intel. Talk to us about your omnichannel strategies today.

Read More About Omni Channel

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Omnichannel Customer Service: Definition and Benefits

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 07:07:30 +0000

Increasing market share and getting products noticed are goals that every business works toward. With consumers shopping in so many ways these days, competitive businesses strive to make their presence felt in as many places as possible. Of course, most of these “places” aren’t physical locations. Social media channels, websites, and apps allow businesses to market and sell products to bigger audiences.

The Omnichannel approach, which works to unify customer experiences across all these channels, is currently replacing the older multichannel approach. In multichannel models, no provision is made for the fact that customers don’t necessarily stick to a single channel when interacting with your business. This makes interactions disjointed and inconsistent.

For example, if you engage with a chatbot or live chat, email a company and then follow up with a call, you’d like the call to be handled within the context of earlier interactions. The ability to do this requires an omnichannel approach.

Omnichannel Customer Service: an Essential Accompaniment to Omnichannel Sales

Businesses that adopt omnichannel communication for customer service use software to link each customer’s current situation to past events regardless of the communication methods customers chose to use at the time. This allows customer service personnel to provide highly relevant assistance based on previous interactions. It benefits both the customer and the business.

Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Service

Happy Customers, Repeat Purchases, and Recommendations

Great customer experiences make for satisfied customers who will be happy to support your business again. Customer service is a very important component of customer experiences. Research indicates that up to 90 percent of customers will give you repeat business and will recommend you to others following a satisfying customer service interaction. In fact, you’ve probably heard it from others: “Try X Company: I was very happy with their service.” Your omnichannel approach makes offering efficient service much easier.

Saving Time and Building Relationships

Think about the old-fashioned interactions you enjoy with small brick-and-mortar businesses where you’re a “regular” and staff recognise you instantly and know what you want. There’s an existing relationship, and these businesses know its history. Scale that up to a business with thousands of customers. Can you help customers as if they were old friends? With the right technology and the right people to use it, you can.

Valuable Insights Into Customer Experiences and Self-Service Improvements

You’re already investing in self-service options, but you’re still getting plenty of support calls. Why? The answers to this question are easily found in the type of customer service requests that live agents must field. That’s why record keeping and analysis of customer service needs are so important.

By the time customers reach out for help, most of them have already attempted self-service options – sometimes, with mounting frustration. Some customers won’t contact you at all. Finding it difficult to get what they want, they simply move on in search of another solution – possibly from your competitors. That’s why data on customer enquiries is so valuable.

According to Gartner, it’s often possible to reduce live service interactions by 20 to 40 percent using existing functionality. Your happiest customers may well be the ones you never hear from. Your live customer service requests give you valuable information on how you can make things easier for all your customers. Up to 80 percent of them prefer self-service and just about everybody sees a call or live chat as a last resort.

How to Implement Omnichannel Customer Service

Identify Your Channels

When people have questions, they may not want to switch channels to get them answered. Their reasoning? If you’re using a channel, it should be possible to get quick responses right there. Make provision for customer service on every channel where you have a presence. Using social media as an example, you may primarily be using it to raise awareness about what you do. All the same, customers will expect you to attend to any queries they direct to you there.

Use Specialised Software

You don’t have to hover over your social media accounts and email while monitoring your phones and automated chat constantly just to see if anyone needs help. Specialised software does the job for you.

You can see who is struggling to get answers from your chatbot, who has requested information on social media or via email, and which voice calls you need to field on a single dashboard. You’ll also use your software to record data about the interaction: what it was about, why it occurred, what help was offered, and whether customers were satisfied with the solution.

Always Allow for Voice Calls

There are times when customers need to talk to someone. If their query is a complex one, they’re not sure how to express their question in text, or they’re short on time, an efficient call agent can help them reach a solution faster.

Apart from this, customers should always be in a position to choose in-person voice calls – not everyone likes to type – especially when they’re using mobile phone keyboards! Cynical online comments show that customers take a very dim view of businesses that make it hard to reach a human representative over the phone when they feel the need to do so. Don’t let this be your business – especially if you’re offering a premium product.

Be Available 24/7

Omnichannel business? Your customers can shop around the clock no matter where they are. They don’t care that it’s 2:00 AM in your country. They don’t want their enquiry to wait for “business hours.” If you want to do business around the clock, you must also provide service and support at all hours of the day.

Offer Multilingual Support

If you’re doing business multinationally, you must be able to offer multilingual support. Customers will expect help in their mother tongue. Failing to offer this option reflects poorly on your professionalism and attitude towards customers.

Choose the Right People

When customers contact support, they want to talk to people with strong product knowledge, excellent listening or reading skills, and strong communication skills. They’re looking for empathy and a personal touch. Simply regurgitating scripted responses that seem appropriate isn’t always enough. Customers will judge your business based on their touchpoints, and when they’re engaging with support, the way your representatives help them are the criterion they’ll use to evaluate your business. Quality matters, and for that, you need the right people.

Monitor Analytics

Although you might want to engage in real-time monitoring at times, it isn’t always necessary. However, your analytics grant you an opportunity to get to know your customers better, showing you patterns that indicate where your business can improve. Are you making it easy for customers to find information on their own? Do they struggle with product selection, at the checkout, or beyond? The answers lie in the data your customer support interactions generate.

Dealing With Omnichannel Customer Service Challenges

A look at the best practice for implementation of omnichannel customer support uncovers a host of challenges. Feeling overwhelmed? The solution could be perfectly simple. Even the biggest companies are inclined to outsource omnichannel customer service.

Deciding to outsource customer support is the smart thing to do – but choosing a company to represent your business isn’t a decision you should take lightly. Apart from practicalities like scalable access to live support agents and software that helps you to gain an overview of support activities, the quality of the personnel is an important factor.

Although cost savings are definitely on the cards when businesses outsource customer service, simply opting for the cheapest solution may not be the best idea. You can probably think of examples from your own experience: long waits on hold, agents who don’t even try to understand your query, unclear diction, and lack of interest spring to mind.

At RSVP, our successful omnichannel customer service and support track record is attributable to quality – both in terms of the tools we use and the people we employ. Our agents know that every interaction matters and that each customer should be treated like a VIP. That’s why major companies like Audible and Mercedes Benz trust us to deal with their most valuable asset – their clients. Want to earn a reputation for great omnichannel customer service? It could be as easy as partnering with us. Contact us today!

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Key Differences Between Omnichannel and Multichannel

admin — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 12:43:33 +0000

Who remembers when a business consisted of a brick-and-mortar store equipped with a telephone and a postal address? It was a time when doing business was simpler, but nobody is looking back with regret. The tools and technologies we have at our disposal today, while adding complexity, allow us to do so much more. And, with new methods, new terminology is sure to flourish.

In today’s post, we’ll compare the terms “omnichannel” vs “multichannel”: related terms that nevertheless have different meanings. You’ll use them in different ways too. For example, you can prefix them as descriptions of how you approach marketing, communication, customer support and sales – and you’re probably doing at least one of them already. So, are you omnichannel or multichannel? Our descriptions should clarify this for you.

What is Multichannel?

You can visualise a multichannel model as a diagram with your business at the centre, and all the different channels you use surrounding it and linking to your business. Keep this picture in mind. It will become important when comparing multichannel to omnichannel.

Advantages and Shortcomings of Multichannel

If you’re multichannel, you’re able to reach customers and generate awareness across each of the channels you use. The biggest advantage of this is that you stand a good chance of gaining customers because you have better visibility – and, you can engage with these customers on each of the channels you use.

But, there’s a big problem: your channels all “talk” to you and your customers, but they don’t “talk” to each other. This means that it can be hard to gauge what messages are resonating with your customers since they can switch channels throughout the process leading up to a sale.

It also affects customer experiences because every time they switch channels, they have to start at square one again. And, since you have so many different things to monitor and so many places where information is hiding, there’s no way you can do it any differently – unless you switch to an omnichannel model.

What is Omnichannel?

Omnichannel is similar to multichannel in that you use multiple channels to market your products, talk to customers, and sell goods. But there, the resemblance ends.

Take the mental picture we created when discussing multichannel. Now, place your customer in the centre, and overlap all the channels. The first big difference? Your customer is at the centre of things! And, because all the channels overlap, your customers can switch channels and simply resume their interaction with your business right where they left off.

Omnichannel Example

For an example, we can look to one of our clients: Virgin Wines. Although the wines are, of course, excellent, you’ll find that one of the top reasons for its 4.5 star Trustpilot rating is customer service.

Customers are especially delighted with how well service agents “know” them, even contacting them when a particularly exciting wine they’ll like becomes available. While sales are made, real relationships are built – and they have an omnichannel foundation. Apart from the company’s website, there’s an app, social media presence across platforms, and more. Yet, representatives are able to personalise service to individual people – rather than individual, siloed platforms. That’s omnichannel in action!

Advantages of Omnichannel

It’s easy to see that visibility and reach are shared advantages in omnichannel vs multichannel marketing and sales. But omnichannel takes it a step further, allowing you to craft customer journeys across overlapping platforms and channels. As the facts and figures show, this is extremely important.

McKinsey says that over 50 percent of people engage using 3 to 6 channels every single time they make a purchase. Going omnichannel allows them to interact with businesses in a way that’s relevant to their current position in the customer journey, reducing effort. You may have heard that customer effort is an important customer experience metric. It is! The easier it is for customers to complete a purchase, the more satisfied they’ll be, and making it hard could even mean you lose customers along the way.

Gartner found that 62 percent of consumers say that switching channels is high-effort – but if you’re using an omnichannel strategy, you’ll be in the 38 percent that make doing business easy – regardless of any channel transitions. That translates to better revenue and a higher chance of repeat purchases.

At the same time, you’ll be getting more accurate data on customer behaviour, helping you to evaluate and improve your marketing, sales, and service efforts. And of course, that means even more sales and even more satisfied customers.

Disadvantages of Omnichannel

So far, so good. But what’s the downside? There are reasons why not everyone is going omnichannel, and first among these is the technology and infrastructure it requires. Implementing omnichannel can be complex, and you won’t realise all of its benefits without good management to drive it. Research indicates that successful omnichannel implementation often requires organisational restructuring – and a change process that can be painful and hard to manage.

Going Omnichannel: Is There a Simple Solution?

While most businesses today are multichannel, there are clear advantages to transitioning to omnichannel. And, as with so many things involving costly tools and extensive data analysis and reporting, outsourcing is often the key.

Outsourced omnichannel support that joins the dots between different steps on customer journeys, no matter which channel they’re using is a great place to get started. Without making any material changes to your business itself, you get access to expertise, and those all-important analytics that help you to see what works for you and your customers and what doesn’t. At the same time, your customers get unparalleled service. What could be better?

Considering the transition to omnichannel business? Start by talking to RSVP, a London-based customer service company that specialises in omnichannel communications. We focus on your customers – and we give you the information you need to build an even more successful business.

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Omnichannel Retail; Definition, Trends, and Benefits

admin — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:16:41 +0000

If there’s one thing that most retail businesses know for certain, it’s that they face competition. They also know that in gaining the edge over their competitors, brand recognition reinforced by brand exposure can work in their favour.

Prospective customers are exposed to brands across multiple platforms or channels. They might visit a physical store, see a print advert, check out an online shop, use an app, or even interact with brands over social media. In short, there are a lot of places where customers are to be found, and it makes sense to have a presence wherever your customers are.

If you’re already doing this, you have a multichannel retail presence – but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re realising the benefits of omnichannel retail – even if you’re using every channel imaginable. To explain this, let’s take a deep dive into omnichannel retail and how it works.

What is Omnichannel Retail?

Omnichannel retail strategy aims to unify customers’ experience across all the channels your brand uses. It rests on the principles of visibility, personalisation, measurement and optimisation. Its goal is to craft experiences that will appeal to all customers regardless of their individual interests, how they interact with your brand, and whether they switch channels in the process.

As a simple example, imagine that you see a product you’re interested in while browsing your socials. You decide to move to the website and you instantly find the product you were interested in. You’re also shown some related products. But you notice that there’s a physical store near you. You can order the things you want and pick them up in store, saving on delivery costs or qualifying for a discount. It’s a done deal and you’re happy with the results.

As you can imagine, the retailer benefits, but so does the consumer. However, without the synergy between the different channels you used, it wouldn’t have happened at all. To achieve this, the retailer implemented a conscious omnichannel strategy.

How to Develop an Omnichannel Retail Strategy

Look at What You’re Doing Already

Every good strategy begins by determining where you are right now. Here are the points to include:

Your existing marketing channels
The customer journey maps relevant to people using these channels – including those who switch channels during their journeys
The degree to which each channel shares information with the other channels you use
Customer lists that can be used to develop audiences on other channels
The results you’re achieving through marketing on digital channels
Any technologies you already use to unify and automate customer experiences across channels

Now that you know where you currently are, you can look for ways to create the unified experiences that define omnichannel retail. Your customer journey maps and analysing any data you’re able to collect on real customer journeys will be a big help.

Assemble a Suite of Tools

If you aren’t already using tech tools to achieve an omnichannel retail experience, or have a limited toolbox, it’s time to set one up. Here are the bare basics you’ll need:

An inventory management system: Understocking means your customers may not get what they want. This is a bad experience – worse if your promotion is the reason they visited your online or physical store. Overstocking is a waste of resources. Inventory management software helps you to track inventory in real time, and helps you with stock replenishment. It should “talk” to your ecommerce platforms and warehousing system.

A customer relationship management system (CRM): Your CRM collects and analyses customer data. It should be able to work with other elements such as your ecommerce, email marketing, and social media platforms. This allows you to personalise offers and target your marketing campaigns. Whether communication is automated or requires human intervention (as it sometimes does), your CRM should allow you to present relevant information and provide service that matches individual customers’ current needs.

A data integration platform: Bring all your data from different channels and tools together with a data integration platform. It must synthesise all this information, analysing it and transforming it into reports that help you to optimise your omnichannel retail strategy.

A merchandising optimisation tool: Using data analytics, AI, and machine learning, a merchandising optimisation tool has multiple uses. For example, it can help you to forecast market demand, determine optimum pricing strategies, roll out seasonal campaigns, and personalise user experiences.

If you sell from brick-and-mortar stores, you can add this channel to your omnichannel mix. You can still measure customer purchasing patterns with the help of loyalty cards or customer apps, using the data to enrich your customers’ experience while boosting your sales through targeted promotions.

Remember: Visibility, Personalisation, Measurement, Optimisation

With your baseline information captured and your toolbox assembled, it’s time to get to work. If you’re low on usable data, you’ll be working by guess, but even if you have data that seems to point in a certain direction, you can’t rest on your laurels.

Your four goals are to achieve visibility, personalise customer experiences effectively, acquire data and measurable results, and optimise your omnichannel retail strategy based on real-world data.

Omnichannel Retail Trends

In-Person Contact

We’ve become so accustomed to digitising everything and assuming it will be cheaper that way, that this trend might come as a surprise. The truth is that digital marketing isn’t as cheap as it once was. That’s led to a growing number of digital-only brands opting for a brick-and-mortar presence or other opportunities for in-person contact. But don’t underestimate the power of digital selling – research shows that establishing a physical presence will drive even more traffic to your online store.

Enriching In-Person Shopping With Digital Experiences

The truth is that people are social creatures. Shopping from your armchair is rarely as exciting as going out on a “proper” shopping trip and most people like to see and touch products before buying them. At the same time, the digital experience is still important. Some stores are bringing the two types of shopping together, offering digital tools to enhance the in-store experience.

Deliberately Blending On and Offline Shopping

Buy online and pick up in store (BOPIS) is a popular trend. Most consumers say they discover and research products they’re interested in online – but don’t like waiting for shipping. BOPIS solves this problem while cutting costs. It can also lead to even more sales when customers decide to browse the physical store before picking up their purchases.

The flipside of this is buying in-store for shipping to home. This allows retailers to operate their stores as showrooms where people can view products. If they buy them, they’re shipped from the retailers’ warehouses. The advantages are obvious: customers get to see products before they buy, and retailers don’t have to work as hard to get the conversion or cover the costs of a full-scale shop.

Omnichannel Customer Service

Whether or not you plan to add brick-and-mortar to the mix, omnichannel retailing calls for equally ubiquitous customer service and support. It satisfies consumers’ need for easily accessible information, and when live agents step in, it compares well to the type of service they’d expect in a physical store. It makes sense that if you want to engage customers across channels, you also need to be ready to serve them no matter where and how they reach out.

Social Media Selling through Video Content is Bigger Than Ever

Whether you decide to make your own social selling videos or hope to use influencer marketing, social selling keeps growing. TikTok and Instagram will continue to drive sales through video content, and if you aren’t using these channels yet, you should consider doing so. With your analytics to back you up, you’ll be able to develop the kind of content that sells your products across channels.

Building Communities

Helping people to feel like part of a community when they interact with your brand goes a long way towards building engagement. As a retailer, you can help to bridge the gap between suppliers and consumers by featuring inspiring content like showing artisans at work or supporting important causes through your products. The approach you take should be tailored to fit the product, the audience and the channel.

Optimising Touchpoints Across Channels

When Grandad was a boy, he may have seen a print ad that spurred him to go to shop and buy a product. That’s just two touchpoints. But any single customer you have may have passed through as many as six different touchpoints using several different channels before making a purchase. That’s why omnichannel retailing, and the attendant ability to join the dots between touchpoints has become so important. Optimise every touchpoint to create great customer experiences.

Omnichannel Retail Requires Omnichannel Communication

There are many different ways to communicate with customers, and not all of them require one-on-one interaction between people. But the whole purpose of omnichannel retailing, apart from growing sales, is to make customers feel like they’re having a “conversation” with your brand. It’s one they can pick up on again even if they switch platforms, and much of it can run on auto. But there’s no point in personalising if there’s no in-person customer service.

You’re selling to people, and when they want assistance, they’ll expect to get it immediately, no matter what time of day it is or how they choose to reach out. When automated options like chatbots fail, one-on-one interaction with real people is the only solution. Fail to offer it, and you’re not only losing out on a sale – you’re also losing repeat business from someone who might otherwise have been a loyal customer.

At RSVP, we’re omnichannel communications experts – and we’re available whenever your customers want us. It’s a scalable solution that builds your brand’s reputation for excellent service. Win over customers who might otherwise have walked away empty-handed never to return. Monitor communication across channels around the clock. Get those all-important facts and figures you’ll need to help optimise your omnichannel retail experience still further.

Want to know more? Talk to us about RSVPs omnichannel support services today.

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What is an Omnichannel Customer Experience?

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 08:51:48 +0000

As the ways in which we communicate with another and experience the world around us develop, so does the terminology we use when referring to the methods we employ when doing so. And as businesses, it becomes important to interact with customers using the platforms where they are present and which they prefer. The challenge lies in the fact that both we and our customers use multiple channels of communication.

Our customers may send us an enquiry on any one of several social media channels where our marketing messages are seen, follow up with an email, and then contact us over the phone. The omnichannel customer experience is determined by how seamlessly we can integrate all these experiences and communications so that we aren’t treating our customers as if they were “strangers” every time they switch channels.

Failing to offer a well-integrated omnichannel customer experience leads customers to suppose that we are inefficient at best, and at worst, simply don’t care about them.

How to Improve the Omnichannel Customer Experience

Technology is only as good as the people who use it and the methods they employ. So, besides having the capacity to integrate communications across channels, businesses need people with a strong understanding of the business and the ability to join the dots across communications histories to understand their customers’ current situation properly.

Omnichannel Customer Experience vs. Omnichannel Marketing

While talking about what the omnichannel customer experience is, we should also touch on omnichannel marketing. Marketing messages generate awareness of businesses and what they have to offer and signal the starting point of customer experience. In omnichannel marketing, every possible means of conveying marketing messages is employed. And while all marketing messages should be consistent with the brand identity, we may use different approaches to marketing depending on the channels where our messages are to be seen.

Supposing that our marketing generates interest in our products, and people respond with questions or expressions of interest, it’s important to know which message they’re responding to. We may even adjust the tone and content we use in our responses based on the platform and the marketing message in question.

Omnichannel marketing is part of omnichannel communication, but if we succeed in getting the conversation going, omnichannel communication continues long after the initial marketing message goes out.

Multi Channel vs Omnichannel Experience

There’s some debate about what the difference between omnichannel and multichannel customer experience means in practice. The simplest way to distinguish between the two, however, is to look at integration. It’s perfectly possible, yet not desirable, from a customer-centric perspective, to use multiple channels without integrating them for a seamless experience.

From a linguistic perspective, it might be argued that “Omni” means “all,” but it isn’t practical or desirable to use every channel at a business’s disposal to market itself and communicate with customers. For example, a B2B enterprise will generally prefer LinkedIn to Instagram as a platform for customer communication and marketing. Additional communications channels like email and telephone would be added to the mix. And, of course, there could also be other offline touchpoints to consider. If these channels are well-integrated, the business in our example is using omnichannel methods even though it may not be using every single platform it could possibly employ.

So, to sum up: in answering “What is omnichannel customer experience,” we can say that the experience comes from the way in which a business integrates the messages to and from customers and the ways in which customers experience the businesses across all the channels used – both online and offline. The aim, of course, is to move customers from exploration to purchase, and for them to find the whole experience, including after-sales service, a positive one.

Outsourcing Omnichannel Experiences

Achieving a positive omnichannel experience for customers requires the right technology and the right people. It also helps if it’s scalable. Doing a big marketing drive? If it’s successful, communication between your business and its prospective customers is going to peak. Leading them through the sales funnel to purchase is going to require extra capacity – and following purchase, an increased volume of support queries can be expected.

Being able to scale up and scale back can be difficult for businesses, even when they have all the tech tools needed to integrate communications. That’s where outsourcing, and RSVP, enters the picture. Don’t leave your customers waiting for answers. Don’t give their interest time to cool down. Don’t make them feel as if they’re dealing with disjointed, poorly-managed communications that don’t take their personal experiences into account. It’s time to get help! RSVP’s omnichannel support services are there to help you create the customer experiences you want your customers to enjoy. Want to know more? Reach out today!

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Omni Channel Communication; Why Your Business Needs It

admin — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 07:25:17 +0000

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.

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.

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What is Omni Channel Marketing? Definition, Strategies, & Examples

admin — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 09:46:42 +0000

Just when you thought you had a handle on all the marketing terminology and ideas, you come across “omnichannel” marketing. What is it? Should you be doing it? How does it affect your marketing strategy? Relax! It’s not as hard as it sounds! Let’s unpack this idea and see how you can use it to get more sales! After all, that’s what marketing is for, isn’t it?

What is Omni Channel Marketing?

“Omni” is a prefix that quite literally means “everywhere.” Think of words like “omniscient,” “omnipresent,” and “omnipotent.” Can you aspire to be everywhere? When it comes to marketing channels, you can! There are some pretty eye-watering omni channel marketing definitions out there, but in practical terms, it simply means being where your customers are, no matter where that is.

So, we have a market. It’s active on Instagram. It uses Facebook. It likes to surf the web and might send a website enquiry or email. Maybe our preferred customers are younger and like Snapchat or TikTok. Or, they like to talk over the phone. Maybe some of them visit your business in person too! It’s not unheard-of, after all. Now, imagine a situation in which your business has mastered all these possible opportunities to market itself to potential customers. That’s omni channel marketing!

Omni Channel Marketing Examples

Disney, Virgin, Starbucks, Amazon: these are big names – and they’re using omnichannel marketing to get even bigger. Do you even stand a chance? The awesome thing is that you really do! It’s just a matter of getting your marketing message across on the platforms where you’re likely to find people who like what you do and are willing to buy it!

The only challenge you have is manning all these platforms. Although there are lots of opportunities to get your message across, anyone who responds is going to expect you to take note and get back to them fast. To add to your difficulties, they’re going to expect you to be aware of every way they’ve contacted you before – even if it isn’t on the same channel from which they’re currently interacting. Terrified? Don’t be! With the right software and people to help you, you can do this. You don’t have to be Amazon or Disney to use omnichannel marketing effectively.

An Omni Channel Marketing Strategy

You already have a marketing strategy, but applying it to different channels means a little tweaking in the way you present it. For instance, Pinterest and Instagram, are all about gorgeous images. LinkedIn is seriously B2B, and TikTok is for short videos featuring (usually young) influencers that will help you to build up the buzz.

Although your strategy may remain unchanged, the way you use a channel to boost sales depends on its audience’s expectations and preferences. It’s a case of giving them what they want, and being ready to respond to their interactions in a channel-appropriate way.

Benefits of Omni Channel Marketing

By now, you’ll already have formed an impression of the importance of omnichannel marketing. If you’re “everywhere,” you get exposure to a bigger audience. But to get the best out of your omnichannel marketing efforts, you need to decide where your audience is likely to take you seriously. That’s easy enough to determine. But apart from being where your customers are, what other benefits can you hope to realise?

The key lies in the “omni.” They commented on Facebook. They sent you an SMS, they emailed you, and every time, you knew who they were, what they said to you before, and how you responded in the past. This is startling to look like a relationship! Could it be love? They’ll certainly form a positive impression of your efficiency!

In a nutshell, we’re looking at a wider audience and better opportunities for relationship building if you can manage an omnichannel approach effectively.

How Am I Going to Manage All These Channels?

In this context, overcommitting is almost worse than undercommiting. You don’t want to be seen as a business that “talks at” consumers when “talking to” them is so much better. If someone contacts you on any one of the channels you’re using for promotion, you’d better respond appropriately and quickly! Fail to do so, and you get the image of yet another care-for-nobody corporate. The best way to get sales? Probably not!

A lot of the channels we want to be present on are social media channels. The key is the word “social.” If a user asked a specific question, responding with a “like” just isn’t enough. Answer it! But even outside of social media, you need to be alert. They sent you an SMS? Answer it! You received an email? Reply! What’s more, reply with reference to every communication you’ve received from that customer across all the channels they chose for communication!

How will you manage? You need the right people and the right software to make your omni channel marketing have meaning. The software can be expensive. Having professional people manning the many channels through which the public contacts you will add to your costs and give you yet another area to oversee. But there’s an easy solution, because where needs arise, there’s always a company that knows how to meet them.

RSVP It

Imagine having a team of communications experts that is available 24/7. You brief them. They run with it and report any anomalies to you. Sounds good so far?

According to our clients, it’s great! We represent them wherever they are, at any time of the day, and in their clients’ preferred language. We join the dots between emails, social media contacts, previous phone calls, SMSs and email enquiries. We offer our clients and their customers the very best of the omnichannel experience. Are you ready to be an omnichannel star? RSVP is ready for you!

Read More About Omni Channel

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Articles About Omni Channel | RSVP

Our Guide to The Omnichannel Approach

Table of Contents

First, Let’s Define Omnichannel

A Broader View of the Omnichannel Approach

How Omnichannel Solutions Help Different Industries

Differences Between Omnichannel and Multichannel

Omnichannel Customer Service

Design an Effective Omnichannel Customer Journey

The Omnichannel Customer Experience

Omnichannel Communication

Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel Retail

Omnichannel Analytics

What are the Trends?

Personal Service in an Impersonal World

Creating an Omnichannel Customer Journey

Omnichannel Customer Journey Example

How to Design Effective Omnichannel Customer Journeys

1. Learn how customers shop

2. Optimise touchpoints

3. Plot your sales funnel

4. Choose a combination of tech tools strategically

5. Analyse your data and get customer feedback

6. Make it even easier

7. Keep up the good work

Benefits of Prioritising Omnichannel Customer Journeys

Ready to Join the Dots Between Channels? RSVP Can Help!

Understanding Omnichannel Analytics

What is Omnichannel Analytics?

Why are Omnichannel Data Analytics Important?

Tools for Omnichannel Analytics

How to Implement Omnichannel Analytics

Challenges for Implementing Omnichannel Analytics

Customer Journeys Can Be Complex

Data Integration and Accuracy

Data Privacy and Security

Unifying Channels and Eliminating Silos

Managing Change

AI and Omnichannel Analytics

Human Interactions and Omnichannel Analytics

Omnichannel Customer Service: Definition and Benefits

Omnichannel Customer Service: an Essential Accompaniment to Omnichannel Sales

Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Service

Happy Customers, Repeat Purchases, and Recommendations

Saving Time and Building Relationships

Valuable Insights Into Customer Experiences and Self-Service Improvements

How to Implement Omnichannel Customer Service

Identify Your Channels

Use Specialised Software

Always Allow for Voice Calls

Be Available 24/7

Offer Multilingual Support

Choose the Right People

Monitor Analytics

Dealing With Omnichannel Customer Service Challenges

Key Differences Between Omnichannel and Multichannel

What is Multichannel?

Advantages and Shortcomings of Multichannel

What is Omnichannel?

Omnichannel Example

Advantages of Omnichannel

Disadvantages of Omnichannel

Going Omnichannel: Is There a Simple Solution?

Omnichannel Retail; Definition, Trends, and Benefits

What is Omnichannel Retail?

How to Develop an Omnichannel Retail Strategy

Look at What You’re Doing Already

Assemble a Suite of Tools

Remember: Visibility, Personalisation, Measurement, Optimisation

Omnichannel Retail Trends

In-Person Contact

Enriching In-Person Shopping With Digital Experiences

Deliberately Blending On and Offline Shopping

Omnichannel Customer Service

Social Media Selling through Video Content is Bigger Than Ever

Building Communities

Optimising Touchpoints Across Channels

Omnichannel Retail Requires Omnichannel Communication

What is an Omnichannel Customer Experience?