Omnichannel customer support: Definition, strategies, benefits

Not all that long ago, customer support was pretty cut and dried. If people had a problem or a question, they typically had two routes to choose from:

• Pick up the phone and call the business
• Visit a customer service desk within the store or business

Today, customers have seemingly endless options to contact businesses and get their questions answered. There are still phone calls and in-store visits, but there are also emails. SMS text messages. Web chatbots. Social media platforms. Even forums and message boards.

Customers can opt for a variety of different communication channels to get the support they need. When they do, they expect a cohesive and consistent experience when moving between those various channels.

According to a Salesforce report, 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is just as important as its products and services. So, omnichannel customer support is no longer a competitive differentiator — it’s table stakes. 

But what exactly is omnichannel support and, more importantly, how do you pull it off? We have your guide to go beyond the buzzwords so you can effectively understand and implement omnichannel customer support.

What is omnichannel customer support?

Omnichannel support means using all of your available channels — email, chats, social media, phone calls, and more — to provide support to your customers. However, these channels aren’t their own little siloes or islands. An omnichannel approach integrates all of your channels to provide a far more seamless experience and consistent customer journey.

What is an example of an omnichannel customer experience?

Imagine that a customer comments on a brand’s Facebook post with a question or issue. The brand responds with a templated comment directing the customer to their other customer service touchpoints or self-service options.

The customer follows the link and sends a live web chat — and, when doing so, needs to recap the entire problem all over again. After some back and forth via chat (whether it’s with a chatbot or a live support agent), they’re told someone will reach out to them via phone or email.

When that happens? They start all over again — repeating the issue that they’ve explained twice already.

That’s multichannel customer service. It gets the job done, but each touchpoint requires that the customer starts back at square one. Omnichannel customer service cuts out those redundancies. All of the support channels are seamlessly connected so that consumers (and agents) can move between them with all of the information and context they need.

When that customer moves from Facebook to a live chat, the agent will already have an overview of the issue (likely in their customer service software) and be able to jump right in with targeted support. It’s far less frustrating for customers and far more efficient for businesses.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel customer support: What’s the difference?

The above example clued you in on the major difference between omnichannel and multichannel support: multichannel uses various channels across the customer experience, but omnichannel connects those channels.

Both approaches rely on various channels to provide support (which is likely why they’re often confused). However, with multichannel customer support, those touchpoints all stand on their own — there isn’t any strategic overlapping between them.

In contrast, true omnichannel support looks at all of the channels as a connected part of the whole so that customers can seamlessly move between channels without redundancies, repetition, confusion, or frustration.

The benefits of implementing an omnichannel customer support strategy

As customer expectations continue to evolve and increase, an omnichannel experience has quickly moved from being a competitive advantage to a non-negotiable requirement.

And brands are taking notice. According to a recent Gartner report, improving the customer experience was the top priority for customer service leaders in 2024 — and an omnichannel approach is a key piece of that. Here are a few of the compelling benefits of omnichannel customer service.

1. Improved customer loyalty and reduced customer churn

As the above examples highlighted, a customer support experience that lacks any cohesion and consistency is infuriating for customers, which can seriously hurt your customer retention. According to Zendesk research, 50% of customers will switch to a competitor after just one bad support experience.

And today’s customers don’t just want positive support interactions — they want personalized ones, with McKinsey research concluding that 71% of customers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions.

That level of personalization is difficult to achieve with disparate and disconnected channels. In contrast, with an omnichannel approach, customer service agents can handle those support interactions with all of the information they need — identifying information, purchase history, and past conversations — to facilitate a highly targeted and specific conversation.

That also means much faster resolution times for both customers and support team members. They spend way less time getting up to speed and searching for details — and that means more time spent fostering a positive relationship and brand identity. Omnichannel communication is more effective and, at its core, more efficient.

2. Boosted agent productivity

It might feel like customers are the main beneficiaries of omnichannel customer support, but support teams stand to gain plenty too — especially in terms of efficiency.

Offering omnichannel customer service typically requires that support teams consolidate their tech stack. That alone saves support agents time and stress as they don’t need to navigate between so many different apps and tools that offer different functionality.

As mentioned above, agents are equipped with all of the history and information they need to handle customer issues efficiently and effectively. In recent Zendesk research, 64% of customer service agents said a single view of a customer’s interactions across all channels would help them do their job better, ranking only behind more training (65%).

And when 80% of consumers say speed is the most important element of a positive customer service experience, your agent efficiency and response times carry a lot of weight.

3. Enhanced analytics and insight

Companies with an omnichannel contact center also benefit from a better understanding of customer behavior. Rather than looking at individual channels and having to piece things together, you get a far more holistic view of all of your customer interactions.

That level of insight into the customer journey can be powerful for every aspect of the business. The support team can improve support interactions. The sales team can highlight the right selling points and smoothly handle objections. The marketing team can tweak the marketing strategy. The product team can adjust the roadmap. In this way, an omnichannel support strategy helps the whole business.

You get the idea. A multichannel approach is a lot like having puzzle pieces strewn out in front of you — you know they fit together, but you can’t quite see it. True omnichannel support is like looking at the entire, completed puzzle.

When 79% of organizations say a solid grasp of the customer journey allows their organization to become more customer-centric, omnichannel service can help you get the complete understanding you need to better serve and retain your customers.

What are the challenges of an omnichannel customer support strategy?

There’s no doubt that having an omnichannel customer service strategy is the best way forward. So why doesn’t every single company do it? The reality is that, much like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, it can be somewhat daunting and challenging to pull off. Here’s why.

1. Choosing the right technology partner

Managing so many channels requires a lot of tools, and most customer support teams have a huge array of apps and software at their disposal, including:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) software
• Customer support software, including workforce management software and contact center software
• Communication tools
• Knowledge base software for customer FAQs
• Collaboration tools
  
  

It’s tough to build and maintain a consistent customer support experience when you need to rely on all sorts of disparate and often outdated tools. In fact, more than 30% of workers say using outdated systems that are cumbersome and slow is a major concern.

To offer an omnichannel experience, many companies need to update legacy systems (which may include their contact center solution), knock down data silos, and overhaul their existing tech stack to ensure they’re set up to manage and maintain an omnichannel approach that meets customer needs.

Ultimately, having an integrated platform to oversee the entire customer journey and all of the support interactions is easier — but the process of getting there can require a lot of time, energy, resources, and tolerance for change.

2. Training and empowering customer service representatives

For companies that have separate and siloed customer service channels (and, as a result, team members), omnichannel support will come with a bit of a learning curve. Agents will need to develop their cross-channel proficiency, as well as an understanding of any new tools that are implemented in an omnichannel contact center.

The support team isn’t the only group impacted, though — an omnichannel approach often involves other teams and departments too.

Take marketing as just one example. Marketing oversees many of the digital channels that can be used for support, such as social media. Research from Hootsuite found that 32% of organizations say it’s exclusively the marketing team that provides service through social and messaging apps. Those team members will also need to be trained on how to provide omnichannel support.

In short, true omnichannel support isn’t just about unifying your customer journey and your technology — you need to unify your team too.

3. Maintaining consistency

With or without omnichannel support, people expect a connected, cohesive, and seamless customer experience across multiple touchpoints. Yet, that level of consistency can be hard to guarantee on preferred channels (particularly when there are different agents or even entire teams involved).

To fully support an omnichannel strategy, companies need to clearly outline:

• Information and answers: While you don’t necessarily want templated support interactions, there shouldn’t be any debate over your protocols or the best way forward for customers. Put simply, they shouldn’t get a different answer from different channels.
  
  
• Processes and workflows: Similarly, defined workflows will help teams juggle all of the available support channels without feeling like they’re pulled in a dozen directions.
  
  
• Brand voice and messaging: Consistency across channels isn’t just about the support you provide — it’s also about what you sound like. Using a casual and conversational tone on social media but a formal and rigid tone via email is confusing for customers. Voice and tone guidelines will ensure your brand identity remains constant across all of your channels and agents.

How to implement and optimize omnichannel customer support

Looking at the above three challenges of rolling out omnichannel support highlights three of the major steps companies need to take to implement an omnichannel approach:

• Find the right tools to integrate customer support channels and internal workflows
  
  
• Provide adequate training and resources to the customer service team team as well as any other team that might handle support interactions
  
  
• Develop standard operating procedures, guides, and other resources to support consistency across channels and efforts

But what else do companies need to do to not only implement omnichannel customer support, but optimize it? Here are a few additional strategies.

1. Establish your success metrics

How will you know when you’re not only doing omnichannel support but doing it well? Much like with any other business initiative, it comes back to setting goals and attaching quantifiable metrics so you have clear indicators of when your efforts are paying off.

There isn’t a hard and fast rule about what metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) or customer service metrics you need to use for omnichannel support. It all depends on your business and unique objectives. Here are a few ideas in several different categories to get the wheels turning about what targets you can set:

Customer service metrics

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT): Ask customers how satisfied they were with their experience. Add the positive responses, divide by the total responses collected, and then multiply by 100.
  
  
• Net promoter score (NPS): Ask customers how likely they are to recommend your company on a scale of zero to 10. Subtract the customers who answer with a six or lower from the percentage of customers who answer with a nine or 10.

Operational metrics

• First contact resolution (FCR): The percentage of customer support tickets that are resolved by agents on the first try.
  
  
• Average handle time (AHT): The average length of a customer’s call — essentially, how long they need to communicate to get a resolution.

Workforce management metrics

• Schedule adherence: Measures the overlap between when a call center agent is scheduled to work and when they actually work.
  
  
• Occupancy rate: Measures the proportion of time that a support agent is actively working with a customer contact, either directly engaged with a customer or completing any ancillary work associated with the contact. 

That’s not an exhaustive list. The point is to understand exactly what you’re trying to achieve with an omnichannel approach — whether that’s boosting customer satisfaction, improving your operational efficiency, or all of the above — so you can clearly identify when you’ve hit your target.

2. Regularly review and update channel offerings

Omnichannel support doesn’t mean that you can’t ever go beyond the whole picture and zone in on a specific channel. In fact, it’s worth regularly taking inventory of all of your channels so that you can:

• Add new channels that could boost customer engagement (for example, WhatsApp is a popular mobile app that’s gaining ground in customer service)
• Remove existing channels that aren’t being used
• Create resources or automations to support popular channels
• Offer additional training on popular or upcoming channels
• Tweak and refine your internal workflows
• Improve upon your customer journey maps

You can use data and analytics, customer surveys, agent feedback, and more to understand how certain channels are performing and adjust your approach from there.

Put simply, omnichannel doesn’t need to equate to offering and using all of the channels — it’s still well worth determining which ones are the most impactful for your customers and your overall business.

3. Implement customer feedback loops

Customer feedback is always important — and that’s especially true when you’re trying to implement and optimize omnichannel support. You need to know if it’s having the desired effect on your user experience.

Your customers might not be forthcoming with their feedback (whether it’s positive or negative). So, when you decide to prioritize omnichannel support, build in some opportunities to collect their insights.

Including brief surveys and feedback forms at the end of your support interactions will clue you in on how they feel about your customer experience. Combine that with data, social media comments, customer reviews, discussions on forums, and anecdotal evidence from support agents and you’ll get inside your customers’ heads and continue to improve upon your omnichannel support.

4. Leverage AI and automation to enhance customer support

Customers crave personalization and a human touch, which might lead you to believe that the robots (read: artificial intelligence and automation) have no place in modern customer support.

However, these technological advancements can further enable an omnichannel customer experience. According to a recent Deloitte report, “The future of AI in the customer experience is both more efficient and more human.”

From bots to handle common inquiries to automation to prioritize and organize customer support tickets, these technological advancements can improve the efficiency of your human agents. However, that doesn’t come at the cost of your user experience. AI can help agents deliver on other customer expectations, like highly personalized interactions and proactive support or product recommendations.

And while some concerns over AI’s role in customer support are understandable, remind your team that AI and automation ultimately aren’t meant to replace human support agents in offering omnichannel support — they’re meant to empower them.

5. Enable self-serve customer service options

When it comes to omnichannel support, it’s tempting to only think about real-time channels — including live chat, phone, and email.

However, you can’t neglect any self-serve customer service options you’ve created (like a knowledge base, help page, or other educational resources). Much like your live channels, those need to be integrated as part of an omnichannel approach. 

67% of customers admit that they prefer self-service options over speaking to a live agent, which is why self-service is a top priority for customer service leaders in 2024 (even ahead of generative AI).

But it’s not enough to simply create the resources. In the same survey, 91% of respondents said they would use an online knowledge base if it were not only available but also tailored to their needs. So, your self-serve options don’t just need to exist – they need to be accessible, personalized, and easy to navigate.

As you assess and take stock of your channels, make sure to include your self-serve ones too. Those need to be evaluated and updated just as frequently as your real-time support channels. Your target audience will thank you for it.

Start your omnichannel customer support strategy today

Not that long ago, your customers had two options when they needed help: a phone call or in-person support. But today’s customers have seemingly endless choices when they want to get in touch — and they expect a seamless experience regardless of which route they choose.

That’s a big job for support teams. And, to deliver on those expectations, you need the right team in place across all of your support channels.

Assembled can help you ensure your support team is adequately staffed and ready to provide fast, top-notch service. With Assembled, you can benefit from:

• Real-time management: Quickly adjust your staffing to improve response times and keep your teams fully covered.
  
  
• AI-powered Assist: Automate suggestions and responses for agents, reducing your agents’ workload while also improving your customer interactions.
  
  
• Performance management: Gain insights into agent productivity and identify areas for improvement to help you build a stronger team that aces every channel.
  
  
• Quality assurance: Monitor your customer interactions to maintain high standards, conduct more effective training, and maintain your customer satisfaction.

You can’t nail an omnichannel customer experience without the right team in place. With Assembled, you can get a bird’s-eye view of your entire support team and ensure you have the right people in the right place at the right time. 

Ready to elevate your customer experience without stressing out your agents? Book a demo of Assembled today.

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Last updated: September 18, 2024