The introduction of omnichannel in digital communication is attractive to both the company and the client. The company gets a more loyal audience and an increase in sales, while the client gets convenient interaction with the brand.
First, let's look at some statistics:
- Companies with omnichannel retain an average of 89% of customers, while those without channel connectivity retain only 33%.
- 58% of shoppers, according to a digitalcommerce360 survey, check availability online before visiting an offline store.
- Twenty years ago, shoppers used an average of two channels to communicate with a company. As of 2016, there were already six points of interaction.
- Sales with omni-channel interaction are 2-3 times higher than with multiple unrelated channels.
Benefits to the audience
- Communications without repetition. There are 100 billion messages and over 1 billion stories sent through Facebook services every day. Consumers are overwhelmed with content from companies and expect easy interaction in this stream. Without omnichannel, users may receive the same brand messages through different channels, and that annoys many.
- Quality service regardless of the channel chosen. The consumer uses the point of interaction that is most convenient to him, and in the case of a competent omnichannel always gets quality service.
- Personalized approach. User actions via any channel are recorded in the system and the company uses this information to configure individual communication with each customer.
Benefits for the brand
- Reduced risk of losing a customer. If the user changes the phone, he will still be available to the company through other channels: email, push, and others.
- Opportunities for deep segmentation of the audience. The more interaction channels the company has, the more information it can gather about its customers to use in-building communications.
- Increased reach. For example, you can reach an audience that actively uses only one channel.
- Automating customer communications. For example, you can set up the sending of notifications and messages, guided by the experience of purchases and history of interaction with the company.
- Saving of advertising budget. When introducing omnichannel, a company can reallocate resources between several communication channels depending on which one is more effective in a specific situation.
How popular is the use of digital communication channels today
Interactive communication allows you to accelerate the process of interaction with the consumer. The main difference between traditional and interactive channels is the possibility of two-way communication through digital technology. And if the company manages to establish a dialogue with the consumer and create an emotional connection, it will be much easier to cooperate with him for a long time.
In addition, interactive channels are still cheaper than traditional media ways of communication. It's no secret that the cost per contact through email is much lower than the cost per contact through direct mail.
In any field, the relationship with the customer is evolving: the number of interactions is decreasing, but they are becoming more effective. Communication plays an integral role in ensuring customer loyalty. In addition to the personalization of offers, so businesses need to develop omnichannel services. It implies not just communication with the customer through different channels (multichannel), but the integration of these channels into a single system, which allows you to create a more accurate and informative CRM system and then use the data to create a more personalized approach.
Recruitment for omnichannel communication
Сontact center recruiting is also a challenge for any company that wants to provide omnichannel. The process of profiling and selection of personnel should take into account the peculiarities of work for each individual service channel.
Why it's hard to predict workforce attraction when using omnichannel communication
When any significant new technology emerges, workers and users need new skills to be able to use it effectively and sustain potential productivity gains.
ICT (Information Communication Technology) skills have become an important requirement for digital employment, yet a significant portion of the population still lacks the basic skills needed to function in the new digital world.
Universities, companies, and individuals should contribute equally to the development of digital skills, responsible and appropriate attitudes toward the use of technology, including knowledge of digital rights and responsibilities, and networking etiquette.
For example, for voice communication, it is important to have competent and clear speech, but for e-mail appeals, for example, the ability to write and write logically, and in case of chat it is also important to write fast, concisely and to the point.
Thus, the profile of a voice line operator will be different from that of an e-mail messenger. Accordingly, the training system should take into account the specifics of work in each particular service channel. If you are looking for candidates with different service profiles for voice channel and e-mail today, but the company realizes that tomorrow they will have to work in chat, social media, and instant messaging, and do it effectively, it means that you have to change the requirements for the candidate right now, taking into account the future prospects, upgrading training programs, quality control and salary conditions for such candidates.
What are the consequences of inefficient workforce planning?
Omnichannel is the unification of channels into a single system, through which the user can comfortably interact with the brand.
According to PWC research, 59% of customers say goodbye to the company after several negative communications. And 17% - already after the first unsuccessful contact.
What your customers need in today's world:
- the ability to freely choose to order, purchase, pay and receive a product or service;
- convenient and intuitive service;
- alternatives in the choices of communication.
Problems that are often found:
- The transition to an omni-channel model affects many functions in existing information systems. Developers are faced with the fact that there is technology debt in the current IT architecture, the interaction of systems is accompanied by constant problems that need to be dealt with.
- Previously made errors in defining the functions that certain systems should perform, and as a consequence, incorrectly conducted integration and blocking in the development of the business. Unfortunately, correcting these mistakes takes a lot of effort, money, and time.
- Incorrect definition of the key requirements of the systems. Relying only on promotional materials from software vendors often leads to unpleasant surprises.
However, for experts specializing in the development and implementation of an omni-channel strategy, the implementation of such projects takes no more than six months, even taking into account the correction of existing system errors and the creation of new architecture. A team of experienced and competent specialists will help you to organize your omnichannel IT platform (including website, CRM, CMS, mobile, etc) so that its components do not take resources from each other and properly function in tandem.
Implementation of omnichannel staffing
An important step is the organization of educational work with staff and clients. And they need not only to be informed of the new options available but also to involve them in the activities that the omnichannel model implies.
Many companies have already focused on providing access to a variety of training programs for their employees and customers. For this purpose, companies have created their training centers, which develop and carry out training and education programs for employees, as well as master classes for customers (both their own and joint ones with partners). Training are devoted to new technologies, product innovations, current construction solutions, and even business development.
Before introducing omnichannel to your employees, address these issues:
- Operator scheduling and managing different channels of communication. To improve efficiency or train employees, you need to consider all of the individual needs of each channel.
- Matching employee skills to communication channels. This is to ensure that each employee does their job perfectly using the appropriate skills for the task at hand.
- Looking for and hiring experts to implement an omni-channel strategy. In order to successfully accomplish your goals, you must first of all look for experts who: have already worked on similar projects, identify business requirements and constraints, based on the experience of their own development and leading suppliers of IT solutions in the market; work openly and transparently, presenting all the results of their research.
What to think about implementing omnichannel
Train and prepare your employees:
- who is responsible for which channel?
- do you have enough employees to work with clients?
- what will be their motivation?
- how do you quickly train them to work with omnichannel technologies?
- from where will they receive up-to-date information about the company's products and services?
- what will be their workload and KPI?
The Omni-Channel workstation allows the contact center operator to:
- work with calls from different channels in a single user interface and by single service scripts;
- to see the entire history of contacts with the customer;
- use a common knowledge base when working with any channel;
- process several sessions simultaneously.
Within companies, it is necessary to create a favorable climate for working with innovation. The success factors here are:
- A clear strategy and ambitious goal-setting
Successful digital transformation programs require ambitious goals, sufficient resources to achieve them, and the close attention of senior management. The strategy should include a development plan for three types of innovation: product, process, and business model innovation.
- Conclusion of partnership agreements
The development of partnerships with banks, fintech companies, non-banking companies (telecommunications and IT companies) will allow complementing existing competencies with new ones to gain a competitive advantage. It is also necessary to actively cooperate with the Central Bank to assist it as a regulator in developing favorable conditions conducive to the development of innovation. Banks should closely monitor the activities of fintech companies and startups in the market, identify the most promising ones and acquire them or create strategic partnerships with them.
- Development of missing competencies.
Targeted work on the development of innovation requires new skills: in digital technology (working with large amounts of data and artificial intelligence, optimization of internal IT infrastructure), human resource management (finding young talented professionals who are ready to work with innovative technologies, from ordinary developers to specialists in artificial intelligence), the ability to deeply understand the needs of customers.
- Transformation of the company's corporate culture
The culture of effective work with innovations implies an agile approach to their development, encouragement of cross-functional interaction, providing employees with the necessary freedom of action - intangible motivators are especially important for young promising specialists.
Before choosing
As mentioned above, omnichannel is not just about connecting all channels on a purely physical level. It is the unity of the user experience and the unity of the communication strategy. It's a customer-centric approach. If you don't have this approach in place yet, omnichannel won't work as it should. You need to build the right culture of your support first, and then put a communication strategy on top of that.
In recent years, the omnichannel approach has scaled. Another major way to adapt to these changes is to use software that supports them. Voiptime Cloud - the creator of a customer service platform that provides first-class care, also helps create thoughtful itineraries and builds long-term relationships with customers. Voiptime Cloud allows you to combine an unlimited number of voice and non-voice communication channels (e-mail, messengers, webchats) into one contact center system. This creates a single point of control of all communications and allows you to quickly influence the service processes.
Our call center platform is designed to automate contact centers for any-sized business. It is a high-tech solution for integration into business processes, controlling the quality of service, and optimizing the cost of organizing customer experience.
