We all know the benefits of omnichannels as customers. They make a huge difference in determining a great customer experience and one that can be pretty average, or even poor in some cases. They help optimise channels to suit individual customer needs, personalise experiences and diversify an audience. They also work excellently in combining the offline and online. For example, a customer has an issue with their tablet and attempts to bring it into the store with a question. They’d like to sync their device to their phone perhaps. This can go one of two ways. The store employee can tell the customer how to do this step by step and the customer leaves with instructions and feeling a little overwhelmed by the information given. All in all, not the best customer experience. Say, the customer calls a helpline as the store is closed, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This scenario quickly becomes even worse as the employee is unable to obtain information on the additional device to be able to help. The customer has been on hold for a substantial amount of time and as a result of not getting the help requested, is now angry. He or she leaves an angry review of the call and goes away with nothing resolved and 20 minutes of their life wasted. The other scenario is this – the employee at the store is able to use omnichannels to obtain the required information on the other device and syncs them for the customer in a matter of minutes. The customer walks away happy and recommends the brand to an array of their friends who queue around the block to get the same product.
Customer Loyalty
One of these scenarios could have easily been avoided with the aid of omnichannels. In a nutshell, they work by closing the gap between the digital and more traditional offerings of customer experience. Customer data silos have been around for years but omnichannels help boost a business or brand by essentially connecting that all-important customer data to provide a unique and personalised customer experience. It all comes down to simplicity of the product and of the experience on offer. After all, the easier it is for a customer to be able to use multiple channels simultaneously to suit their specific needs, the more likely they’ll do business in the first place – and return to the business or brand time and time again.
Diversifying Customer Experiences
One major factor in the benefit of omnchannels is the ability to help organisations to reach out to different leads, opportunities, and customers who only interact on certain channels. Each channel user is a different demographic on offer all under the same umbrella experiencing smoother sales transactions or interactions.
The benefits of using omnichannels are endless for businesses, with more customers being dealt with on a daily basis and with a higher satisfaction rating, prompting loyalty and word of mouth. And given the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect this has had on consumerism changing to an ever more online presence, the solution is here to stay.
