Omnichannel Integration is Key to a Seamless Customer Experience

What’s the difference between multichannel and omnichannel? While many organizations have multiple channels through which customers can contact them, far fewer of them have truly integrated these channels so regardless of which channel a customer chooses, it all leads to the same customer experience.

Omnichannel support is particularly important in 2022, as customers are increasingly using digital channels as their “first contact” of choice, and then migrating to other channels.

In their recent report, “Omnichannel Customer Service 2022,” Genesys (News - Alert) and Incisiv noted 91 percent of customer service inquiries now start via digital channels. Customers expect to get the same high-quality customer journey regardless of which channel they choose.

“From planning and ordering groceries to booking a stylist appointment, making restaurant reservations or planning a kitchen remodel, digital is the entry-point to more consumer experiences than ever before,” wrote the report’s authors. “Ninety percent of all shopping journeys now begin online, up from 63 percent in 2018. For omnichannel retailers, this change in behavior has brought with it a new set of customer service expectations.”

At the same time, customers also expect quick service and issue resolution across the buying journey, balancing pervasive self-service with empathetic human assistance. They’re also looking for transparency in their orders and service request status, including how their customer data will be used, the product’s origin and ingredients, and the environmental impact of various shipping options. Finally, they’re seeking empathy, authenticity, and honesty from agents across all customer service interactions, including flexibility in how their issues are solved.

These omnichannel expectations are the result of poor experiences with bad “multichannel” interactions in the past, according to the study.

“Retailers' immediate response to the seismic digital shift caused by the events of the past few years -- a quick cobbling together of a patchwork of systems to get the job done -- was swift and necessary,” wrote the report’s authors. “However, it should not paper over the fact that most retailers' commerce, order management, and customer service processes and systems were not built with today's reality in mind.”

Sellers should be looking to unify the customer experience regardless of channel, enabling customers to make contact via one channel and seamlessly pick up the transaction in another channel. One way to achieve this may be to make better use of integrated chatbots.

“Chatbots and live agents provide shoppers immediate assistance at the time of their greatest engagement,” according to the study. “Be it to quickly look up order status, answer a query about return policy, or to help guide shoppers to relevant products, chatbots offer shoppers a single, conversational interface within which they can achieve their goal.”

Edited by Luke Bellos