Customer experience with a business is now the major differentiating factor in the customer’s decision-making process. The way a customer feels when they come across your brand on television ads, social media, or your eCommerce website is very important.
A strong eCommerce marketing and sales campaign can persuade a customer to make the first purchase. However, it will take an even better customer experience management strategy to keep the customer loyal to your brand.
This is where omnichannel experience comes into play. Omnichannel customer experience makes it easy to deliver a seamless experience for your customers throughout the customer lifecycle.
An omnichannel approach to sales, customer service, and marketing is a great strategy. No matter which channel customers choose to interact with your company, it focuses on providing a consistent customer experience.
So, what is omnichannel customer experience? How can it help your D2C, B2C, or B2B eCommerce business? Let’s find out!
What is Omnichannel Customer Experience?
An omnichannel experience is a predefined strategy that crosses several customer touchpoints to provide a seamless customer experience. When a company advertises to and supports customers over a variety of channels, they are said to be providing an omnichannel customer experience.
The omnichannel experience involves marketing, selling, and providing customer service across all channels. This will provide a seamless and integrated customer experience regardless of the method or location of a customer's contact.
For instance, your restaurant business may have an online ordering system that allows customers to view your digital catalog on their mobile devices. The customer may decide to order their restaurant supplies or food online and choose to have a curbside pick up or walk into your brick and mortar store.
Whether shopping online or in-store, the customer experience should be seamless and service delivery must be unique. Having a great in-store experience but a bad review about your in-app service is a result of an improperly thought-out omnichannel customer experience strategy.
With an omnichannel strategy, customers can start their interaction with your business on one channel and carry it over to another channel without interruption, either online or offline. For instance, a customer can use your chatbot to ask a pre-sales question, your website to make a purchase, and your ticketing system to receive help without encountering any problems or needing to start over.
5 Ways to Improve Omnichannel Customer Experience
Building and improving your omnichannel customer experience requires different strategies. From investing in the right B2B eCommerce platform to using the perfect customer relationship management tools, let’s look at 5 ways to improve your omnichannel customer experience.
- Research Buyer Personas
The first step to improving your omnichannel experience is understanding your customers. Conducting in-depth research on buyer personas will give you an up-to-date knowledge of consumer behavior.
It will be easier for you to choose the right channels and develop a winning plan if you have a thorough insight into your customers' interests. By determining their preferred online to offline channels and learning how they want to interact with your business, you can get to know your users inside and out.
By illustrating the various demographic groups that make up your niche market, customer personas add enormous value to your company. Understanding your target market and the factors that influence their decision to buy your goods and services requires data-driven research.
Tip: Take advantage of big data and surveys to learn more about consumer behavior, what they want from your brand, and how that has changed over time.
- Identify Customer Touchpoints
Identifying your customers' touchpoints is another way to improve your omnichannel experience. You can get a deeper knowledge of how customers feel about your business at each stage of the purchasing process and when interacting with you via various channels and mediums.
The most effective method for mapping out consumer behavior, including how they switch across channels, is to perform a journey mapping exercise. A user journey map is a graphic representation of all of the touchpoints your customers experience when engaging with your company.
Mapping the stages a customer takes to make a purchase is the first step in creating a customer journey strategy. Customers interact with touchpoints through a variety of channels, making this mapping process challenging.
Tip: Use a customer journey map to draw out your business process flow and customer journey.
- Use the Right Tools and Automation Software
In order to succeed with omnichannel consumer engagement, it's crucial to have the correct technology stack. The right software will help you create a seamless experience across channels.
You can gather and analyze useful customer data, target prospects at the ideal time, and increase conversions with the correct tools in place. By centralizing your data, you can instantly record all client interactions and have it move between different channels.
Using customer relationship management software such as BlueCart will help manage and track customer data. You can also integrate other industry-related software to streamline your business operations and build more efficient business systems.
For instance, businesses in the restaurant industry can use restaurant management software to track restaurant operations and deliver the best customer service. Wholesale distribution businesses can use wholesale distribution software or wholesale inventory management software to automate operations and give customers the best support.
Tip: Boost brand loyalty and your relationship with current customers by using digital technologies and customer engagement tactics.
- Analyze Customer Feedback
By using an omnichannel customer experience strategy, brands can interact with consumers on any channel and gather feedback from them at any point of contact. Websites, social media, emails, in-app surveys, and reviews are just a few of the several channels you can use to get customer feedback.
Customer reviews and feedback allow you to see if your strategies are working or not. As soon as your omnichannel program is up and running, continue to collect and analyze data to make sure it remains pertinent
Tip: A variation in customer behavior, the emergence of users on new channels, or alterations in your market or industry will all necessitate adjusting your strategy.
- Develop Self-service Options
Self-service portals contribute to an overall better brand experience. Customers can access information instantly through self-service portals, which also help businesses save time and money. In order to create an omnichannel experience, you must anticipate your consumers' demands and provide proactive customer support.
The self-service portal has the ability to keep track of the goods or services bought and show what is pertinent to them. You are able to recognize customers' difficulties and respond to them appropriately.
Tip: By fostering beneficial customer interactions, self-service portals contribute to enhancing brand reputation.
3 Benefits of Omnichannel Customer Experience
Omnichannel customer experience is a great way to improve customer retention and customer satisfaction with your brand. Let’s look at three reasons you need to invest in an omnichannel customer experience model.
- Higher Customer Retention
The use of an omnichannel customer strategy allows customers to seamlessly switch between their chosen channels and communicate with your business within the same interaction. Happy customers become loyal customers. As a result, the strategy improves satisfaction and serves as the greatest method for retaining customers.
- Better Customer Journey Mapping
Tracking consumer behavior across several channels helps you get a more comprehensive picture of their behavior when you have an omnichannel approach. All interactions are streamlined into a single platform, and it offers guidance on the best course of action to take to advance your business and increase profitability.
- Improved Customer Engagement
Giving customers a choice in how they interact with your business through omnichannel initiatives increases customer engagement. An omnichannel experience offers an intuitive way for customers to engage with your business. More channels of engagement mean customers can talk whenever they want.
Frequently Asked Questions About Omnichannel Customer Experience
Businesses that focus on providing omnichannel customer experience enjoy considerable increases in customer retention and satisfaction. Let’s answer some questions about omnichannel customer experience and customer relationship management.
What is Omnichannel Strategy?
An omnichannel strategy is a technique that enables you to give customers a seamless experience across all of the sales channels you use. It covers all of your brand's eCommerce online and offline touchpoints, from POS systems to online wholesale directories.
What is Omnichannel vs Multichannel?
Omnichannel marketing builds upon interactions on other channels in order to advance the customer journey at any touchpoint. On the other hand, multichannel marketing employs a range of channels to send a consumer the same material or unrelated content.
What are the Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing?
The benefits of omnichannel marketing include the following:
- Higher customer lifetime value
- Lower customer acquisition rates
- Streamlined operational efficiency
- Increased B2B sales leads
- Improved inventory turnover
Get on Track
Omnichannel customer experience seeks to improve customer experience across numerous channels. You can capture exactly what your customers want, whether online or offline, with the right customer experience management strategy.
Investing in omnichannel strategies for your marketing and sales processes will make a huge difference. Higher lifetime value, improved customer satisfaction and retention, high ROI, and increased sales, are some of the benefits you get from integrating omnichannel customer models.