Shoppers are happy with ecommerce retailers who provide multiple support avenues.
More and more customers expect real-time assistance, so you must provide these options if you want to retain more customers and build your brand name.
Multiple contact channels make your business accessible and available all the time. Nothing bores a customer than a merchant who is almost impossible to get to.
So, if you’re stuck to your old ways, then you’re losing prospects and clients. In digital customer support services, failing to offer several interaction points for your audience is a costly mistake.
But in their efforts to add more than one engagement platform to their support services, a business gets caught between two jargons of the new tactic; Omnichannel and multichannel support.
This article intends to highlight the differences between these two almost similar approaches in meeting your customer’s expectations in today’s ecommerce.
Omnichannel Support Definition
Omnichannel customer support services means providing customers with multiple interaction platforms— like live chat solutions, phone calls, social media, and more— and the experience is connected throughout these avenues.
Connecting several engagement channels in this way ensures frictionless customer service. It brings consistency to the customer care no matter the contact point a customer uses.
Support representatives share details and context about a shopper’s issues per the latest engagement across all channels. That is to say; a customer must not restate their matter over and over.
Omnichannel service focuses on connecting all contact points. That way, a customer’s concern goes to the company’s record, and every department is notified regardless of the method they use.
Multichannel customer service also involves several support platforms but takes a different approach than Omnichannel customer care.
What’s Multichannel Support?
Multichannel customer support service is when a retailer provides customers with more than two different engagement platforms.
Businesses that offer multichannel support allow shoppers to reach them through more than one avenue. The goal of this approach is to give customers the freedom to reach out through their preferred means.
Multichannel support allows a customer to get help either through social media, email, community discussions, or any other means.
Nevertheless, this technique is different than Omnichannel because shopper issues and history are not shared across all contact points. Every support platform is independent, and various representatives tackle customer concerns.
But that is not to say multichannel support is ineffective. Both methods could work depending on the needs of your company and how you implement them.
The rest of this post will discuss how businesses can choose the appropriate approach for their websites.
Which Support Strategy for Your Business?
With different posts online advocating for these new approaches, it can be confusing to put a finger on the right strategy.
As simple as these techniques sound, each of them comes with its set of challenges. Omnichannel requires a high-level of collaboration among departments, while multichannel needs the staff managing the various channels to do their job right.
Multichannel support is obviously less complicated, so small businesses should start with that.
But startups that are well-equipped and financed to implement this strategy can set up Omnichannel support straight away.
A customer support team on service desk solutions that allow them to monitor all their customer service contact points in one platform.
These tools ensure you to stay ahead of all conversations across all the contact channels so that you do not miss out on any customer requests.
Well-built software should allow you to integrate several customer service tools and ensure a seamless connection with these.
They help your agents manage customer requests by lightening the burden for every department.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, providing more than one point of engagement gives your clients the freedom to choose how to reach out to you.
If you choose to use more than one communication platform, make sure you have the agents to attend to all these. You don’t want to announce that your website offers live chat customer support services if it doesn’t.
Because omnichannel is a more sophisticated approach, small companies should start with a multichannel service.
This line of attack also gives the customer support team a chance familiarize themselves with the various contact platforms integration for a better friction-free experience.
