Most companies are committed to enhancing their overall customer experience. One key element of a robust customer experience (CX) strategy is ensuring that the company optimizes experiences across all media channels and touchpoints. Since customers may access company customer service and support in multiple ways, our organizations need to deliver frictionless and seamless customer experiences in every communication channel. An omnichannel strategy ensures unified communication for both support and sales challenges.
There is growing recognition that the best way to ensure optimal customer engagement is via omnichannel self-service. Omnichannel self-service refers to delivering streamlined and consistent experiences across all potential digital channel touchpoints. Key to success is leveraging technology to make self-service support the fastest and easiest way to get answers to most questions. It also ensures that we optimize the customer journey and meet/exceed customer expectations.
Examples of Omnichannel Self-Service
Omnichannel self-service experiences present a consistent set of capabilities and similar UX across touchpoints. These experiences can encompass access to a knowledge base or FAQs, a virtual assistant chatbot, or digital self-service micro-apps purpose-built to make it easy to resolve one type of question or issue. Of these, micro-apps are arguably the fastest growing.
Micro-app experiences are typically delivered to the customer via short links. These links can be incorporated into a web page, customer self service portal, mobile app. The link connects the customer to the web application. Micro-apps can also be incorporated into an IVR menu, with the links sent to the customer’s via SMS or messaging app. Here is an example of such a CX user flow for the financial services industry.
Whatever the application, integration of the omnichannel customer service experiences with the company’s existing tech stack is essential. By ensuring real-time integrations, we enable the most accurate and up-to-date customer data is available across the organization.
To make them easy to use and interoperable across channels and screens, omnichannel self-service micro-app experiences eliminate any unnecessary information or options. They present a single, optimized workflow across every possible touchpoint.
This second example shows a digital CX experience for the insurance industry.
Omnichannel self-service experiences can be built via traditional custom development using an in-house or outsourced team. But a growing number of companies are choosing no-code CX development platforms like FICX to speed the process by 10X or more. These platforms can also reduce dev costs by more than 90% over custom development.
Of course, not all customer questions and issues can be resolved via self-service. Nevertheless, most leaders of contact center agent teams will tell you that the majority of calls that their team addresses are for straightforward requests that customers could easily resolve on their own with the right self-service tools.
Omnichannel Self-Service Benefits
Omnichannel self-service experiences offer a host of important benefits to customers and companies alike:
Increased Digital Adoption
Omnichannel self-service almost always increases the percentage of customers who choose self-service tools over traditional support channels like contact centers and retail visits. By making digital solutions accessible in all potential customer touchpoints, we boost adoption. Further, when we deliver consistent experiences across those challenges, we make self-service more appealing and inviting.
Faster and Easier Resolution
Key to success is leveraging technology to make self-service engagements the fastest and easiest ways to get answers to most questions. With optimized omnichannel self-service experiences, customers get the answers they need more quickly and with less friction than via traditional support channels like a call center or live chat session.
Higher Customer Satisfaction
Research shows that companies with great self-service solutions enjoy consistently higher overall customer satisfaction. The majority of customers today prefer to resolve their own issues if there are easy-to-use tools available to do so.
Improved Customer Retention
Many studies show that robust customer self-service platforms lead to higher customer retention and significantly lower churn rates.
Lower Customer Support Costs
Digital self-service generally costs a fraction of what traditional live support costs. Every potential live agent interaction we deflect reduces total costs as it increases overall customer satisfaction.
Improved Contact Center Team Engagement
Answering repetitive and mundane customer issue questions is boring and stressful. By enabling the contact center team to deflect straightforward customer inquiries, you can improve agent productivity, team member retention, and enhance customer communication.
Future-Proof Support
Customer channel adoption and preferences are constantly evolving. By creating experiences that are channel and screen agnostic, we ensure that our support footprint can extend to new channels and touchpoints as they become available.
When we can deliver virtually the same powerful and efficient experiences everywhere, we increase self-service adoption, improve CSAT, and lower company sales and servicing costs.
Get More Information
If you would like to learn more about omnichannel customer service strategy, visit the FICX homepage or explore some of the other content from FICX on omnichannel experience which is indexed below.
