5 Ways To Improve Omnichannel Customer Experience
When Harvard Business Review and a major US retail company conducted a 14-month study to understand the shopping behaviours of customers, interviewing 46,000 shoppers and finding out that up to 73% of them used multiple channels throughout their shopping journey, businesses just knew that to provide their customers with the best service experience, they had to implement a marketing strategy that would unify these channels whilst providing a single experience for their customers, thereby creating the omnichannel customer experience.
If your business uses an omnichannel customer strategy, integrating the strengths of multiple channels to provide a seamless and streamlined user experience so that your customers can switch between these channels and still get great service, then, you are also constantly seeking ways to invest in more effective omnichannel marketing strategies to achieve maximized customer satisfaction, build long term customer relationships, and in consequence, keep your business competitors far behind.
One omnichannel customer experience with a seamless strategy, today, is Starbucks. Understanding their customer's ordering journey, Starbucks has worked towards creating a convenient app that blends mobile ordering and in-store experience— merging the physical with the digital. You get personalised recommendations based on location and season. It also has a ‘loyalty reward’ program which enables users to add money to their rewards account through the app, a website, or a mobile device. When you sign up for this program, you get a free drink.
It would be quite difficult for competitors to overcome such an efficient marketing strategy.
Let's look at five effective ways to improve omnichannel customer experience.
1. Map out customer journey
In order to provide the best possible omnichannel customer experience, you need a sketch of your customer journey— the platforms they frequent to shop, their purchasing behaviour, the challenges they face while shopping, their interactions with the brand across each touchpoint, and the channels they use. You should know your customer's journey from end to end to ensure that you're capable of providing them with a perfect experience. The omnichannel approach makes this easier. This data will help you to identify weak touch-points and focus on strengthening and connecting them to make it a seamless experience for your customers. Understanding their purchasing behavior will also help you categorise them in segments and improve personalised services.
You'd also be able to pinpoint what part of your omnichannel marketing strategy performs the best, knowing if your business is footfall led or discovery led, in order to use this to your advantage and improve the customer experience. Knowing how your customer finds you is important because you'll be able to predict the kinds of decisions they make at every stage of purchase.
2. Personalize the experience
Everyone likes to be recognized as an individual with unique abilities, desires, and experiences. Consumers feel appreciated when a business recognizes them as individuals and caters for their wants personally.
Digital Trends reports that 73 percent of customers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information to provide more relevant shopping experiences. With the omnichannel approach that allows for outlining the customer journey across touchpoints, customers expect that they get personalized experiences that will make them feel special.
3. Use a self-service channel
Having to contact a customer service representative before questions or complaints are tended to, is a tiring process for a large percentage of customers, so, a self-service channel to help them resolve issues by answering their own questions is more suitable.
A comprehensive FAQs page on the company’s website, app, or social media can be a self-service channel. It is also the most used and very efficient.
4. Sustain customer relationships
By focusing on sustaining customer relationships that creates emotional brand connections, businesses have been able to further keep their competitors out of radar. If emotional customer ties to a brand are strong, it encourages them to become advocates for it's products and recommend them to others.
Bain reports have it that returning customers spend averagely 67 percent more than first-time customers.
Creating occasional surveys to understand how your customers feel about your services and attending to customer criticism are ways to sustain relationships. Personalised SMS to celebrate birthdays and festive seasons will also improve your omnichannel customer experience.
Faster response times increase engagements from potential customers, and reduce churn from existing ones.
5. Give out suitable content
According to Bryson Runser, the best type of content attracts, informs, and engages your audience. The first step to producing great content is analysing it. Make checks to see if your content is up-to-date and correct, or if it reflects what your customers need to know about your brand. Target your content via texts and emails, ensure that they convey a unified message. Practical and informing content will always increase quality of service.