The Importance of OmniChannel Customer Experience in 2020

Traditionally, big brands and corporates spent huge amounts to advertise on platforms such as television, newspapers, magazines, and press releases to create a favorable perception of their brand. We can still remember the ads that played on loops on Doordarshan for years. Any reference to the brand, even now after decades, and we begin to sing those nostalgic jingles in our mind.

For most of us, bottled water is still Bisleri, Photocopy is still Xerox, Vanaspati Ghee is still Dalda, and so on. These brands had invested much effort to have such recall value in our minds that some minor bump in perception was simply overshadowed by the way we felt about the brand.

Jump to 2020, where startups and even traditional brands are racing to devise new strategies to reach out to the customers. Lockdown and Work from Home are the “new normal”. The new-age customer is now well informed and has a very powerful medium to register their feedback: The internet-enabled Smartphone. The customer now reaches out to a brand via phone or email if his/her queries are not resolved on chat in real-time. With the increasing threat of online frauds, this customer is always on the lookout for red flags and is very cautious about ratings and reviews, customer service, and user-friendly UI. No longer is this modern customer so easily swayed by catchy ad jingles or celebrity brand ambassadors.

So what has changed in the way Brands do business?

With the increase in customer touchpoints such as Voice, Email, Chat, Whatsapp, social media, the brand’s online reputation is a crucial metric that hugely impacts the customer life cycle, and new business.

The way customers interact and review your brand across platforms defines your online reputation. These can be because of first-hand experiences such as calling your helpline number but being put on hold for a long time or having to repeat the issue several times to multiple agents and eventually being dropped off without a satisfactory response. New customers may also be influenced to back down from buying your product due to a bad review online or the lack of response on some online query posted months back.

Also, since it is almost impossible to erase a bad review about your brand or product, it becomes important to not only tackle these reviews but also to have a strategy in place to build a strong Omnichannel customer experience.

It is also a fact that businesses that have opted for Omnichannel customer support grow at a faster rate than their peers who still depend on disintegrated traditional channels such as only voice or only email.

Also, there might be new companies that will push you to move your brand on just one platform eg: purely chat, chatbots, or any hyper texting app because everyone else is doing it, right? But even as a strategy, depending on just one channel for reaching out to your customers is like putting all your eggs in one basket.

Omnichannel Customer Experts at Work!

In order to improve the way customer experience and online reputation is effectively managed, most businesses are now outsourcing these operations to trusted and experienced BPO partners. These BPO partners help in Omnichannel platform management of your entire customer lifecycle including online reputation. This means that anyone who reaches out to your brand gets an integrated customer experience across all channels of his choice. This reduces the effort to increase engagement and works to create a niche for your brand by providing the best Omnichannel customer experience amongst your competitors. These are few benefits of outsourcing to a trusted BPO Vendor:

• Omnichannel customer experience for all your online & offline channels
• Building an excellent positive online reputation
• Influential customer support to attract public opinion
• Quick and efficient support to queries, feedback, and call out for help
• Collaborating with the brand stakeholders to resolve queries and redefine customer experience
• Pursuing 5-star reviews of brand and products
• Surveys, CSAT and NPS for capturing overall customer experience
• Capturing and analyzing VOC ( Voice of Customers) across platforms