Omnichannel Customer Experience
Gain an in-depth understanding of what goes into creating omnichannel customer experiences.
What is Omnichannel Customer Experience?
An omnichannel customer experience is when a customer is able to switch seamlessly between the different channels a business operates on (e.g. SMS, live chat, email, etc.). With an omnichannel approach, all of these channels are connected so that a business can provide continuity and personalization to its customers even as they move between devices and different touchpoints.
A great example of this is with customer support. Say an individual reaches out to your business first via chat, before rolling into a video co-browse session or voice call with your agent. With an omnichannel strategy, that representative should be able to see the previous chat conversation to understand the issue at hand, rather than coming in cold and asking the customer to repeat themselves. (Or better yet: a business should automatically route a customer to the right representative based on their skill and proficiencies.)
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Top 5 tips for creating outstanding omnichannel customer experiences
1. Understand your customers
The foundation for any omnichannel strategy is to understand how customers are interacting with your business across channels. This is where a centralized data hub comes into play, as it helps businesses consolidate data across marketing, sales, customer support, product, etc. into a single view of the customer.
Armed with this single source of truth, every team in an organization is working with a complete picture of the customer journey to ensure each interaction a person has with their business builds on the previous one. (That is, there are no gaps in knowledge between marketing, sales, customer support, and so on.)
As a result, teams can start to spot patterns in behavior, interest, and intent, to keep engaging with users at the right times, on the right channels.
2. Map out the customer journey
Along with understanding who your customers are, how they behave, and what they’re interested in, it’s important to understand how they’re experiencing your brand across the customer lifecycle. To do this, businesses will often map out customer journeys to create a visual timeline of how customers move through the funnel.
3. Create a seamless experience on every device
The average consumer switches between three devices in a single day, and they expect every single brand interaction to remain seamless. Think of the ease of switching between your television, laptop, or cell phone when watching a Netflix show – because it’s an omnichannel experience, Netflix saves your place so no matter the device you’re using, the show automatically resumes where you left off.
Creating a frictionless experience on every device goes back to our earlier point about understanding your customers. For this to work, businesses need to be operating with an interconnected tech stack that allows every team to view a customer’s complete history, and use that context to tailor each interaction. There are other important factors to consider here as well, like optimizing web pages for mobile through UX design.
4. Engage with customers across all channels
Consumers use an average of ten channels to interact with a business.
Take the vacation rental company, Vacasa. By launching a personalized, cross-channel campaign, Vacasa was able to triple their guest bookings. Here’s one example of the seamless experience they created at check-in: before arrival, guests would receive an email with the codes to the property’s smart lock. Then, right before check-in, guests would be sent a text message with the same codes (so they wouldn’t have to scroll through their emails to find it). You can read more about how they did this here.
5. Provide an amazing experience from start to finish
Now, more than ever, businesses need to deliver top-notch, fluid experiences that reflect the customer’s interests and history with the brand. In fact, people are willing to pay 13-18% more for a better customer experience.
But what constitutes a great experience? At the top of the list is personalization. In fact, 45% of consumers say just one unpersonalized experience is enough for them to abandon a brand. This is where an omnichannel strategy comes into play, as it allows consumers to easily switch between their preferred devices and channels as they move through the funnel.
Frequently asked questions
Omnichannel has become the gold standard across industries. In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, the average number of digital touchpoints increased by 63% – an upward that trend that’s continued ever since. In 2021, businesses said they planned to add an average of four new customer channels, with chatbots, IVR, and video being popularly cited additions.
What this means is: as business channels increase, customers expect to switch between them with ease. People now want the flexibility to interact with businesses on their preferred devices and channels, and to have a continuous (and personalized) experience while they do so. In fact, 60% of consumers said they’ll become repeat customers with a brand that offers a personalized experience.
“Omnichannel” is often used interchangeably with the term “multichannel,” which is misleading.
While both refer to interacting with customers across an array of channels (e.g. social, online chat, email, SMS, etc.), there’s a key distinction: omnichannel aims for an integrated customer experience, whereas multichannel lacks this cross-channel view of a customer’s interactions.
Good omnichannel customer experiences allow users to switch seamlessly between channels as they interact with a business, without sacrificing continuity or personalization.
Here are a few fundamentals when it comes to implementing and improving omnichannel experiences:
Set up a centralized data hub that consolidates customer data from any source in real-time, and easily integrates with new applications and platforms.
Establish a single view of the customer via customer profiles, to understand a person’s history with your brand and how they choose to engage with you.
Having the ability to orchestrate various actions across a set of customer engagement tools to deliver personalized communications based on customer interactions and preferences.
Twilio Engage allows businesses to centralize and consolidate customer data while customizing communications across channels via extensible APIs.