Omnichannel CX: a guide to an end-to-end connected experience

As customer expectations continue to rise, it’s becoming increasingly essential for companies to provide a seamless and consistent experience across all their channels.

This is where omnichannel CX comes in. It’s a customer-centric approach that integrates all your most important touchpoints, creating a cohesive, unified experience for your customers.

In this article, we’ll dive deeper into the concept of omnichannel CX and make the case for why companies should be investing in this strategy. We’ll also present the most critical benefits of doing so, with examples of omnichannel solutions. Finally, we’ll provide you with a few actionable tips to improve the experience you’re currently offering your customers.

What is an omnichannel customer experience?

Omnichannel CX refers to a customer-centric approach that treats every touchpoint across different channels as one continuous experience. Its goal is to allow customers to interact with a brand in the way that’s most convenient for them, whether it's via a website, mobile app, social media platform, or in-store (or, of course, some combination of them all). 

The impact of having an omnichannel strategy for your customer experience cannot be overstated. In addition to streamlining issue resolution and reducing friction, omnichannel operability fosters personalized, efficient journeys that can be a key facilitator for long-lasting loyalty.

Why should companies invest in an omnichannel CX?

2. Customers already use multiple channels throughout their shopping journey

According to a Statista report conducted in 2022, 64% of US consumers use email to contact a brand. However, a substantial number of people also engage with companies through other channels, including websites or chat applications (47%), social media (36%), phone support (30%), and text messaging (28%).²

This data clearly demonstrates just how varied the channels of communication are between a business and its customers, thus highlighting the importance of consistency and seamlessness across all channels, including online, in-store, and mobile. It’s also important to note that maintaining and enhancing this interoperability is not just for the benefit of the purchasing process, but the entire customer journey ( including after-sales).

By investing in an omnichannel CX, companies can ensure that customers can easily find the information they need, regardless of the channel they're using.

This improves customer satisfaction and also helps to increase sales and customer loyalty. Businesses that fail to provide an omnichannel experience run the risk of losing customers to rivals that embrace this comprehensive approach.

2. It improves workflow efficiency

According to our Customer Service Trends report, 50% of support leaders say that more efficient workflows have better equipped their teams to meet customer expectations.

By providing a unified platform to manage customer interactions across multiple channels, omnichannel customer experience solutions streamline the workflow and eliminate the need for switching between different tools or systems.

This results in faster response times, better collaboration between teams, and, ultimately, higher customer satisfaction.

Is your support team struggling with its workload? Meet Intercom’s Workflows, the mission control center for customer service automations.

What are the benefits of an omnichannel CX?

1. Consistency across channels

In an omnichannel approach, customers can engage with a business across multiple channels, such as email, social media, chat, and phone.

Consistency across these touchpoints is crucial because it ensures that the customer receives the same message and level of service on whatever channel they choose to utilize when interacting with your business.

This consistency also helps build trust and credibility with customers, as they’re able to rely on your business to deliver a consistently satisfying experience in every single interaction.

Moreover, companies that create a uniform experience across all their channels have a unified view of the customer's journey, which can help them better understand evolving needs and preferences.

Do you need help creating an instantly recognizable brand that helps your company to nurture trust, loyalty, and retention among your customers? Check out this article: Why brand consistency is key to an excellent help center experience.

2. Enhanced brand adherence and revenue

One of the key benefits of an omnichannel approach is its ability to drive revenue and brand adherence.

By creating a seamless and immersive experience across all channels, businesses can effectively engage with their customers, boost their loyalty, and continually drive sales. Through omnichannel CX, customers interact with a brand through various touchpoints and become more and more familiar and comfortable with that brand’s products, services, and communication style. 

The omnichannel strategy provides businesses with an abundance of opportunities to connect with their customers and create a personalized experience that resonates with their specific goals for that product or service. As a result, businesses can drive brand adherence and revenue; customers, meanwhile, enjoy a more convenient and fulfilling shopping experience.

3. Improved customer satisfaction

An omnichannel customer experience obviously allows people to choose their preferred channel to interact with the company. But it goes beyond increasing optionality for customers by letting them seamlessly switch channels without losing context or forcing them to repeat themselves to different agents or AI bots. This level of convenience and personalization is all but guaranteed to facilitate higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Additionally, businesses can use data collected from different channels to gain a deeper understanding of their customers' needs and preferences, which can be used to improve the overall customer experience.

Say goodbye to generic, one-size-fits-all customer experiences and hello to a tailored journey: A personal touch: Intercom’s guide to CX personalization.

4. Greater collaboration between departments

Omnichannel CX makes it possible to share customer data and insights across departments, allowing teams to work together to solve problems and provide personalized solutions to customers.

By breaking down communication barriers between interdepartmental teams, omnichannel CX fosters a culture of collaboration and teamwork. This can lead to increased efficiency, greater individual and collective expertise, and improved customer satisfaction.

For example, a customer who has a problem with their order can be quickly routed to the appropriate department for resolution. This ensures that the customer receives the best possible service and that their issue is resolved as fast as possible.

5. Efficient issue resolution

With omnichannel customer experience, businesses can gather customer data from different channels and create a more complete, all-encompassing view of their audience. This helps businesses to identify the root cause of the most prevalent and recurring issues and provide personalized solutions to their buyers.

Omnichannel CX also enables businesses to respond to customer queries in real-time, reducing wait times and enhancing customer satisfaction. Efficient issue resolution through omnichannel CX ultimately leads to increased customer loyalty, improved business reputation, and higher revenue.

Omnichannel customer experience solutions

Delivering an outstanding customer experience hinges on providing an omnichannel approach, but it's crucial to select a customer service software that genuinely supports all of your channels. Many platforms claim to integrate multiple channels, yet they often leave key touchpoints scattered and disconnected, resulting in a disjointed experience for customers and frustration for support teams.

Because so many customer service software solutions simply do not provide the omnichannel CX they claim to, Intercom's integrated inbox is a game-changer. Powered by AI, it simplifies usage and consolidates all customer interactions in one place, irrespective of the specific communication channel. This feature ensures support teams deliver a seamless experience across email, chat, social media, and whatever other channels are core to your business. 

Our Inbox doesn't just centralize interactions; it also enhances understanding of customer preferences. This knowledge empowers support teams to personalize interactions, providing tailored solutions that meet each of your customer’s unique needs. The outcome? Businesses can cultivate lasting relationships, elevate customer satisfaction, and foster resilient, enduring loyalty.

How to improve omnichannel customer experience

As you’ve seen, an omnichannel customer experience is no longer a nice-to-have. Increasingly, it’s becoming an imperative for businesses striving to stay competitive in the market. Here are a few key strategies that you can implement to offer a memorable and well-rounded CX.

1. Understand what channels are popular among your customers

First, it's important to understand what channels your customers prefer. While it might initially seem ideal to offer support on all possible channels, sometimes it's better to focus on a smaller number of options and create more refined, customized experiences. 

Conducting surveys and analyzing customer data, meanwhile, can provide valuable insights into which channels are most popular with your customers, and where you should be focusing your efforts.

2. Map out your customers’ journey

Second, mapping your customers' journey is crucial to improving omnichannel customer experience. Delve into the dynamics of how they navigate various channels, discovering their preferences at each specific stage of their journey and other patterns that might emerge and prove actionable. These invaluable insights not only deepen and enhance your understanding of your client, but also empower you to fine-tune each channel for optimal impact.

The best-case scenario for successful omnichannel CX implementation looks something like this: your customer starting with a social media platform, for the earliest stages of engagement or support, followed by ; a seamless transition to email or phone when more in-depth communications is sought. This journey is always worth mapping out to understand – and ultimately maximize – engagement. 

3. Automate responses

Finally, automating responses is an effective way to streamline customer support and ensure a consistent experience across all channels. Workflow automation can be used to route inquiries to the most appropriate team or agent, and even provide automated responses to common queries. This not only speeds up response times, but also frees up agents to focus on more complex issues.

In conclusion, improving omnichannel CX requires companies to first possess a deep understanding of customer preferences, map out their journey, and use automation to streamline support. By implementing these strategies, businesses can provide a smooth, satisfying and highly consistent customer experience across all their channels.

Take your omnichannel customer experience to the next level with Intercom

Our platform offers key features, including real-time messaging, chatbots, and personalized messaging that enable businesses to deliver a consistent, personalized, and effective CX across multiple channels.

With our omnichannel solution, companies can easily manage customer conversations and interactions across various channels, including email, social media, and website chats. And the best part: thanks to our integrated inbox, it’s all in one place. 

We also provide powerful analytics and reporting tools that collect valuable information on customer behavior and preferences. These insights help businesses optimize their CX and improve customer satisfaction.

If you're looking to take your omnichannel customer experience to the next level, our comprehensive platform is the perfect solution. Start a free trial today and see how we can help you deliver a seamless and personalized CX across all your channels.

Sources

1. Statista, Share of retailers who have optimized their customer journeys worldwide in 2020, by omnichannel service. The research was conducted worldwide in 2020, with 300+ retail brands as respondents.

2. Statista, Channels consumers used to contact brands in the United States as of June 2022.