Omnichannel Customer Experience: How to Sell Where Your Customers Buy

Businesses now have multiple channels to interact with consumers. The more interaction your company has with its customers, the more likely they are to convert and become repeat customers.

A multichannel customer experience enhances customer interaction with your brand and increases sales. Let’sLet’s explore what an omnichannel experience is and how you can craft one.

What is an omnichannel customer experience?

Omnichannel customer service refers to a seamless customer experience that encompasses multiple channels so that customers can interact with you across them. In addition to marketing, you can seamlessly integrate sales, customer service, and even in-store experiences so a customer can quickly move from channel to channel to complete their purchase.

Why is an omnichannel experience necessary?

Providing your customers with an omnichannel experience is vital as it improves their experience with your business and brand, increasing sales.

In a survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review, omnichannel customers spent 4% more in stores and 10% more online than single-channel customers. A customer who has an omnichannel experience is more valuable than one who doesn’t have one.

What are the benefits of an omnichannel experience?

1. Personal experience – Besides interacting with your business via the method they prefer (through online shopping, in-store purchases, phone calls, or live chat), customers can do so simultaneously to meet their own needs. Through personalization, customers have a positive experience and are more likely to become paying customers in the future.
2. Loyalty – Having an omnichannel interaction improves customer experience and increases brand loyalty. In a survey by ClickZ, 90% more shoppers are likely to return to a brand when they connect to it on three or more channels. When one finds a brand that gives good customer service, they will stick with it, resulting in one-time customers becoming repeat customers.

How to create a customer experience that that’s omnichannel

Discover how to transform your business” customer experience with these top tips.

• Understand your audience

Creating an omnichannel customer experience must deliver what your customers want when they want it and how they want it. To truly understand your audience, you should do some deep research on them before setting out any campaign. It would be best if you weighed online and offline channels carefully, depending on the demographics you’re aiming for.

Your business might only have a very niche audience, or you might have a mixed audience, so you need to create several customer personas to develop your marketing strategy.

• Map your customer journey

To successfully sell a product, you need to identify your customers and their channels to interact with you. You can use this map to identify areas that could be improved or implemented as part of an omnichannel experience.

You can easily spot opportunities to implement an omnichannel experience by mapping out customers’ journeys and determining the resources you need to implement.

• ‍Implement omnichannel support services

Customer interaction with your brand occurs across different channels, so you must develop an omnichannel customer support strategy to run along with it.

Your contact center agents must also offer the necessary omnichannel support when implementing an omnichannel support strategy. In a great system, the agent’s options for contact, including live chat, web conferences, video conferences, and co-browsing, are integrated into one screen to move from interaction to interaction as needed quickly.

Providing seamless omnichannel customer service is achieved by integrating all possible channels within your contact center. ‍

• Provide seamless omnichannel shopping from beginning to end (including post-purchase)

While many companies can deliver a seamless customer experience during the first stage, what about when the journey continues? Can omnichannel customer service be offered post-sale?

Think about the example of retail shoes. The customer purchases the shoes online since the online store already has the size. Shoes arrive too large, and the customer must order a smaller size. It is more convenient to exchange the shoes in local stores than to send them back.

In the store, the customer is told that they can’t exchange shoes purchased outside the store. As a result, the customer is frustrated, needs to repackage the boots, and must pay for postage to return them. After being refunded, the customer does not purchase the shoes in the new size.

There is a pitfall in this scenario, as the organization assigned omnichannel tactics only to the first few stages of the customer journey. In the post-purchase exchange, the omnichannel experience failed to interact with the brand to satisfy the customer.

Bringing a truly omnichannel experience to the customer in this scenario would have been the assistant’s ability to process an exchange in-store for online purchases. You would effectively end the customer journey and keep the sale.

• Don’t forget about your physical store

Despite the rise of e-commerce, physical stores still hold a significant share of the market.

It is sporadic that your customers are only online or offline. Hence, an effective omnichannel strategy requires you to offer them solutions across multiple channels. While it is good to integrate your online media, the omnichannel experience is incomplete if the physical stores aren’t included.

Wrapping Up

Consumers expect seamless omnichannel shopping experiences. Retailers must adapt to these changing consumer habits and behavior to remain competitive today.

Integrating omnichannel marketing into a company’s business plan is essential. A practical foundation depends on four pillars: sales channels, marketing, advertising, and operations.

A company can only manage operations costs and provide excellent customer service through omnichannel transformation, analysts at McKinsey.