By Hale Jim
With the rise of instant communication tools, customers have come to expect quick and reliable engagement. Omnichannel messaging offers multiple avenues to reach customers and deliver personalized service. Most importantly, focusing on providing exceptional omnichannel customer service will improve brand trust.
Providing omnichannel e-commerce solutions through a company like Mitto is just the beginning. Once you have the tools, you must rely on best practices to drive customer engagement. With an effective omnichannel messaging strategy, you’ll deliver a better consumer experience and improve sales numbers.
Here’s how you can make the greatest impact with your omnichannel software.
Prioritize channels
Omnichannel messaging means your company is engaging with customers across platforms, with examples including text messaging, website chatbots, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google messaging, and more. By identifying your customers’ preferred channel, you can make it easier for agents to reach them.
Along with communicating on select platforms, you must keep cross-platform customer interaction records. The records help prevent frustrated customers who feel as if they need to explain the same issue to agents over and over again. Sharing communication records between teams improves the chances that customers will leave interactions satisfied.
An omnichannel communication strategy may look different across all channels. For instance, agents shouldn’t always prioritize email messages and social media messages similarly. Customers using email may have no idea when you’re communicating with your customers. However, social media users often know if you’re responding to others and could become dissatisfied if you don’t reply immediately.
Improve response times
Let your customers know you value their time. Depending on your company’s size and staffing, response times may vary. However, you could still offer omnichannel communication solutions to inform customers that their inquiries are prioritized and will be worked on behind the scenes. For instance, a chatbot could assist with getting questions answered or put a support ticket in the queue when live agents are unavailable.
Automate your support with a provider like Mitto. Companies can create a personalized experience even when team members aren’t available. When teams are live, companies can save time with omnichannel software that works with multiple customers simultaneously across channels.
Create meaningful interactions
Customer support is only one facet of omnichannel communication. Engage customers with promotions and reminders. For instance, SMS marketing is often underused. Send an SMS message to promote an upcoming sale and link to a coupon. Rather than relying on a customer to remember a service appointment, send a reminder to their phone.
Unify offline and online communications. Different generations tend to have preferences in the way they communicate with brands. Digital voice and email have a more universal appeal.
Listen to customers
Gather customer feedback and be open to changing your omnichannel messaging strategy. Find out how customers prefer to communicate with your brand and how agents can improve their experience. Send out surveys via email, or SMS, or generate a pop-up message at the end of each chat session.
Never remain stagnant. As you gather feedback from customers and agents, you should continuously test your omnichannel e-commerce strategy. Measure the results of any changes and optimize to improve metrics. Before any launch, you should choose the metrics most important to your brand. Do you want more social media engagement? Or are you looking for a surge in conversion rates?
Omnichannel messaging works best when used in conjunction with software options like Mitto. Instead of jumping from platform to platform, you can manage all conversations in a single spot. Maintain a single inbox to improve response times without compromising accessibility.
