Customers prefer to buy from companies that understand them.
Whether you’re buying a new software solution or an item of clothing, you want to feel as though you’re getting something tailor-made to you. This need for more customised experiences has pushed companies to create ever-more personalised experiences for their clients.
After all, the future of business success isn’t about who offers the best price or biggest discount. The only way to succeed is to make your customers feel incredible about doing business with you. Crucially, in today’s world, it means not just serving your customers with the products and services that appeal to them but also meeting them on the right channel.
How Omni-channel Transformed Customer Experience
Today’s consumers shop across various channels and devices, and they look for service and support in a multitude of locations too. To adhere to this trend in the past, many companies used multi-channel strategies to add new avenues to their customer service strategy. Unfortunately, while this gave customers more options to use the platforms they preferred, it led to a disjointed experience.
Around 61% of customers say that they haven’t been able to switch easily from one channel to the next when interacting with customer service in the past. At the same time, around 87% of customers say brands need to put more effort into providing seamless experiences across every channel.
Now that customers are taking a variety of different routes through the buying and service journeys, true personalisation means offering an aligned experience, wherever your client is. Omni-channel contact centre and customer engagement solutions meant that companies had to think more carefully about every touchpoint they have with their clients.
With omni-channel solutions, you don’t just meet your customer on any channel, you make sure that you offer them a consistent experience from one platform to the next. Around 77% of strong omni-channel companies say they store customer data across channels, to allow for contextual interactions with their clients.
Providing a Seamless Customer Journey
Omni-channel CX experiences allow agents and representatives to access various channels and tools within one combined environment. Your agents can respond to SMS messages, instant chat, and call requests in the same platform, and access additional information at the same time. When a chat message accelerates to a phone call in an omni-channel environment, the agent already has the information from the previous chat discussion in front of them.
Additionally, most omni-channel solutions today also allow businesses to connect further channels and tools to the experience. This means that employees can also access service tickets to see what issues a customer has had before or check CRM data for details.
A fully aligned omni-channel strategy for customer experience and engagement allows companies to offer consistent, contextual experiences across channels. The result is happier clients who feel that each experience is more tailor-made to suit their needs. Omni-channel shoppers even have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who shop with just one channel.
Omni-channel experience and personalisation go hand in hand.
