Omnichannel Customer Service Experience

Consumers want true omnichannel experiences

• 75% of health care policyholders say they might switch providers if they don’t get seamless customer service across channels and touchpoints. (Capgemini survey)
• 60% of banking consumers want a true omnichannel experience that would allow them to switch seamlessly between physical and digital channels. (Accenture consumer study)
• 47% of government customers who combined digital and physical channels were not able to accomplish their goals easily. (Forrester US Federal CX Index)

What is omnichannel customer experience?

Omnichannel customer experience refers to the experience customers have of the customer service offered by businesses through multiple channels that are connected across touchpoints for content consistency and context continuity.

The context needs to be focused on the issue at hand while drawing from a 360-degree view, and continuity means the conversation keeps moving forward—no asking for mother’s maiden name more than once, for example.

Omnichannel vs Multichannel vs Multimodal customer experience

Multichannel customer experience: While opinions vary, multichannel customer service refers to using multiple channels for customer service but with or without integration of the channels for content, context, and continuity.

Omnichannel customer experience: Omnichannel, on the other hand, includes this integration, creating a seamless experience across channels. This definition has evolved over time and will continue to do so.

Multimodal customer experience: Gartner refers to multimodal interactions as the use of multiple channels concurrently during the same interaction. An example is when a contact center agent cobrowses with a consumer while having a chat or phone conversation at the same time.

Why be omnichannel in customer service?

Today’s customer uses multiple channels to buy products and get service—six touchpoints, on average (Source: Marketing Week). A typical customer’s journey may look something like this map, haphazard and multichannel. And they expect continuity of experience across channels and touchpoints. For example, when a website visitor escalates to website chat, the agent should have the complete self-service session history of the website visitor up to that point. An email agent should have the complete history of the customer, including an omnichannel conversation view of past interactions, when responding to a query.

Consumers themselves say they want it. Look at the stats mentioned above.

Excellence in delivering omnichannel customer experience has thus become an imperative.