How Do You Evolve Your Omnichannel Strategy?

We have been deploying omnichannel contact center solutions for our customers for many years.

The channels our customers use include email, phone, SMS, WhatsApp, website chats, chatbots, messaging apps, mobile apps, and social media.

Do you need to have all of these channels to provide omnichannel?

Certainly not.

We have understood certain home truths about omnichannel, and they are:

1. You don’t need to have all the channels. You can pick and choose based on your customer needs and preferences.
2. If you don’t know your customer preferences, use primary channels like phone, SMS, email, and website chats. Ensure exemplary service in each of these channels.
3. Ensure you listen to information about your brand and products across social media and the web. This would allow you to identify the channels you have to be on.
4. Integrate your customer experience platform with all of these channels and your enterprise applications, like CRM, helpdesk software, and other customer interaction interfaces.

This would be a great way to approach your omnichannel strategy.

These are the broad learnings that we have had about omnichannel strategy.

If I have to break it down for you as a step-by-step process, this is how I would suggest you go about your omnichannel strategy.

How Do You Evolve Your Omnichannel Strategy?

Let us look at a ground-up approach to evolving your strategy.

1. Define Your Business Goals

Are you looking at increasing revenue, retaining customers, enhancing brand visibility, or achieving a combination of these?

How does your omnichannel strategy align with each of these goals? How do you measure the success of your strategy, and how do you allocate resources?

Answers to these would help you start with your omnichannel strategy.

2. Customer Profiling and Segmentation

Understand your customers – slice and dice their demographics and map it with what they buy from you or what features they use in your product.

This would give a fair idea of the buying patterns, preferences, and pain points.

Very likely, the channels in which they are present and their communication preferences can also be understood with the demographics.

3. Map Detailed Customer Journeys

Create detailed customer journey maps to visualize the customer’s various touchpoints and interactions with your brand.

Identify moments of engagement, decision-making, and potential drop-offs. This mapping helps you strategically understand the friction points and position your experience differently at each stage of the customer’s journey.

4. Choose Your Channels Wisely

Let us assume you have defined your objectives, understood your customer segments, and mapped the journey.

You will have a fair idea of what channels you need to choose.

How do you go about implementing those channels?

You must be mindful that you must allocate resources to manage the channels. You cannot start a channel and leave it unattended.

You need to work out the cost implications and success factors. Besides, you should define SLAs for each channel and comply with them.

Considering all these, you ought to choose your channels, ensuring you effectively reach and engage with your customers.

5. Tight Integrations

Ensure all your internal solutions are easily integrable with other systems through API calls.

This would provide a single view of your customer across all channels and interfaces.

With omnichannel, you could leverage data-driven insights from all customer interaction interfaces and deliver personalized experiences.

You can use purchase history, queries & concerns, reviews, and demographic data to recommend products or content that resonate with individual customers.

6. Consistent Branding and Messaging

Ensure a consistent visual identity and a tone of voice across all channels. Consistency instills trust and helps customers recognize and connect with your brand, regardless of the touchpoint they’re interacting with.

7. Cross-Channel Coordination

While browsing your website, would your customers be able to place a call and talk to your product expert or a customer success executive?

When interacting with your chatbot, would your customers be able to choose to interact with a human agent seamlessly?

Would your customer be able to add items to their shopping cart and access them at your physical stores?

Imagine having this level of cross-channel coordination, and your customers would love you for that.

8. Monitor and Measure

Implement analytics to track the performance of each channel.

Measure key performance indicators such as conversion rates, engagement metrics, and customer satisfaction scores.

Use these metrics to identify trends and make data-driven decisions.

As new channels become relevant, be prepared to integrate them into your omnichannel strategy.

Actively seek feedback from your customers about their experiences across channels. Monitor online reviews, conduct surveys, and engage in social listening to gather insights.

You can easily understand which channels need improvements and additional resources and which to drop.

---

Building and refining an omnichannel strategy is a continuous process.

Constantly assess your strategy’s effectiveness, make necessary adjustments, and remain open to data-driven insights as you strive to deliver exceptional customer experiences across all touchpoints.

---