Omnichannel communications happen when a business plans to interact with the customer at all touchpoints of the selling process. Interactions start with pre-sale, end with post-sale, and cover everything in-between. Omnichannel contact centers aim to create a consistent customer experience across all platforms and channels by aligning the message, tone, and voice of all communications.
Omnichannel strategies allow contact centers to integrate insights, data, and purchase points more effectively. For customers, it provides a seamless purchasing experience and leaves a positive omnichannel customer experience. There are endless reasons for implementing an omnichannel experience. To help narrow it down, we have put together the best strategies to level up your outbound contact center.
Consistent messaging is critical for creating great one-on-one communication with a customer. People want to feel like they are being listened to and heard, even if agents are busy. Being consistently present helps assure customers that they’re being taken care of. It will also help your customers know what to expect from your call center.
Aim to position your chat, text, social media, voice, and email messaging to match the brand identity. Ensuring your brand voice is consistent across platforms will align customer expectations and create a solid brand. When messaging is aligned, you are able to deliver the correct information to your audiences no matter what platform they use.
Over the past few years, customer buying behavior has dramatically changed. Instead of spending hours waiting on customer support calls and visiting multiple stores to find the preferred product or service, customers are doing lots of research beforehand. Online reviews and social media channels heavily influence customers' purchasing decisions. If a negative comment is left unattended, customers will associate a negative experience with your business. Answering comments assures your audience that you are listening and responding to their concerns.
Monitor social platforms for customer support to eliminate the poor experiences displayed on your company profile. Respond quickly to concerns and questions to boost omnichannel customer engagement on your social media platforms.
As your audience, and the platforms you speak to them on, grow, it’s unrealistic to be managing all communication manually. A customer relationship management (CRM) tool will help you organize, segment, and reach your audience with the important notifications, alerts, and information they need. Automating these channels will provide an integrated experience for both your team and your customers.
Some great places to get started with automation include chatbots. With chatbots, you can easily communicate with customers without extra or redundant work. This helps your agents free up time to focus on more complex conversations.
Nailing an omnichannel strategy on the first try is unlikely. Part of a great omnichannel system is tracking metrics in order to identify what section of your communications and/or call center needs more work, or where you can capitalize on a good performance. Self-service call analytics like the Hiya Connect dashboard provides industry-standard KPIs. These are important for tracking answer rates, call attempts, and call durations. Analyzing these will produce insights that can be turned into actionable steps to improve call performance.
Phone calls are an essential part of your omnichannel success but ensuring customers pick up your calls is never easy. Using the Hiya Connect Voice Performance Platform, you can place authenticated and identifiable calls that build trust with your customers. Are you looking for even more ways to improve your contact center strategy? Download our Beyond Caller ID eBook for more ways to drive revenue through a voice performance strategy.