Omnichannel vs multichannel: What's the difference?

Omnichannel and multichannel customer support may sound and appear similar at first, but upon closer examination, it becomes clear that there are many distinctions between the two. 

You can think of multichannel systems as a collection of individual musicians playing their own instruments in different rooms, where each musician represents a different support channel. While each musician is playing a piece of music, they’re not aware of what the others are playing, and there's no coordinated effort to create a unified symphony. 

Omnichannel customer service, on the other hand, can be thought of as an orchestra performing in a concert hall. Here, each musician still represents a different support channel, but they’re all playing in harmony under the direction of a conductor. The conductor ensures that each musician, or channel, works together, creating a cohesive experience for their audience. 

Today, we’ll take a deep dive into the differences between these two approaches, the benefits that they can provide, and which one is best for your organizational needs.

What is omnichannel support?

Omnichannel customer service is a comprehensive support approach that integrates multiple communication channels to provide a unified customer experience (CX). Unlike multichannel support, which simply offers different avenues through which customers can contact a business, omnichannel systems ensure that all of these channels are interconnected. 

For instance, an individual can begin a conversation through a chatbot, continue it via email, and resolve it over a phone call, all without losing previous conversation history. Someone operating a physical store might have both eCommerce and in-store customer support.

Providing a consistent customer experience across both channels can increase customer retention and take a more customer-centric approach to service. This would be considered the “omnichannel experience” that senior leadership teams may track as part of their multichannel retail strategy.

Studies have shown that utilizing omnichannel customer engagement can increase sales revenue by an average of 9.5%. Making it one of the key functional areas to invest in for support leaders.

How does omnichannel support work?

Omnichannel support is made possible by centralizing various customer communication channels into a single, cohesive location. It’s often underpinned by a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that collects data from various touchpoints. No matter the channel, when a customer reaches out, the CRM ensures that their engagement history is accessible to support agents. The goal is to provide a seamless customer experience through individual channels that could be in varying sources (a mobile app, online store, offline like through phone centers, and much more).

What is multichannel?

Multichannel refers to a strategy where organizations offer multiple independent channels for their support initiatives. Each channel operates autonomously, meaning that a customer's interaction on one channel doesn’t automatically carry over to another. This setup allows individuals to choose their preferred method of communication, providing flexibility in how they engage with a company.

However, the independence of these channels often results in a fragmented customer support experience. If an individual starts an interaction on social media and then follows up via email, they may have to repeat their issue due to lack of context. That being said, multichannel support can lead to frustration for both consumers and service agents.

While omnichannel approaches are typically preferred where budgets allow for it, multichannel support is still a vastly superior option to only utilizing a single channel – 90% of consumers expect to interact with brands across multiple avenues.

How does multichannel customer service work?

Multichannel support typically involves dedicated teams assigned to manage each specific channel. These agents are trained to handle inquiries relevant to their channel, ensuring expertise and efficiency across them all. Nevertheless, since these channels operate independently, these interactions are often siloed. This means that when a customer contacts a business through different channels, each interaction is treated as a separate case.

To manage multichannel challenges, many organizations invest in robust email management tools, social media monitoring software, live chat platforms, and call center solutions. Each system captures interactions within its specific channel, allowing agents to respond efficiently. Still, while representatives can resolve issues within their respective realms, the absence of a unified view means that individuals might experience inconsistencies when switching between channels.

Why is omnichannel support important for your customers?

In today's digital age, customers expect to engage through their preferred methods, whether it be phone, email, live chat, social media, or in-person visits. Omnichannel support ensures that these interactions are interconnected, allowing individuals to switch between channels without losing context. This continuity reduces instances of customers needing to repeat information, thus creating a more efficient service experience.

Another significant advantage of omnichannel customer service is its ability to deliver personalized responses. By integrating data across all touchpoints, companies can provide tailored solutions based on an individual's preferences. This approach not only resolves issues more effectively, but also makes customers feel more understood. Additionally, the real-time synchronization of information leads to individuals receiving faster resolutions, enhancing their overall CX.

Benefits of omnichannel customer service

Leveraging an omnichannel approach can provide organizations with a plethora of benefits including quicker resolution times, improved customer satisfaction, retained context across channels, and more. The specific advantages to be gained by your business will depend on how you utilize the system and the challenges you aim to alleviate through its use.

Lower Resolution Time

By consolidating conversations from various platforms into a single location, companies can verify that customer issues are always promptly addressed. This integration allows support reps to access a unified view of user interactions, regardless of the channel used. As a result, agents are able to quickly understand the context of an issue, eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves.

Moreover, omnichannel support often incorporates advanced technologies like automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline resolution processes. Automated systems can handle simple queries instantly, freeing up human representatives to focus on more complex issues.

Fast and accurate responses can be vital to support initiatives, as 90% of consumers report that immediate replies are essential or very important when they have a customer service question.

Higher NPS and CSAT

When individuals can interact with a company through their preferred communication methods, they generally feel more valued and understood. This flexibility ensures that customers can reach out in the way that’s most convenient for them, leading to improved customer satisfaction scores (CSATs).

Furthermore, omnichannel customer service can enhance net promoter scores (NPS) by facilitating a more human-centric approach to consumer interactions. By leveraging data across multiple touchpoints, businesses can gain deeper insights into individual customer preferences and past interactions. This valuable information empowers support agents to tailor conversations more precisely to each individual’s unique needs.

Unified customer context

The unified customer context provided by omnichannel systems helps promote more effective collaboration across departments. When user engagement is centralized in a single platform, it becomes easier for different team members to collaborate on complex issues. For example, if a technical issue requires input from both customer support and an IT department, both teams can access the same information and coordinate their efforts seamlessly.

Omnichannel support also verifies consistency in service delivery, irrespective of the channel used. Whether an individual reaches out via email or live chat, they can anticipate a coherent experience characterized by consistent responses. This uniformity cultivates trust and reliability, enhancing overall brand perception.

Customer journey simplified

The extensive self-service tools provided by omnichannel systems empower individuals to resolve issues autonomously at any time, preserving resources for organizations and simplifying the customer journey for end-users. Through online portals, knowledge bases, and FAQ sections, consumers can find answers to common questions and troubleshoot issues without manual assistance. This self-service approach empowers customers to discover solutions quickly and independently.

Omnichannel support can further simplify the customer journey by facilitating proactive support capacity. When utilizing these platforms, companies can anticipate unique needs and reach out with relevant assistance before individuals even realize they require help. This preemptive approach not only enhances the CX, but also reduces the likelihood of issues escalating into larger problems.

All these insights can assist in a multichannel marketing strategy, as well. These cross-channel insights can inform a marketing approach that ensures marketing campaigns are speaking to specific pain points in the market and how these various channels aim to provide that unified experience and present the paint points that these products or services aim to resolve.

Examples of omnichannel and multichannel customer service

Let’s examine a couple of real-world use cases to examine how omnichannel and multichannel support strategies might benefit businesses in live scenarios. Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found great success utilizing an omnichannel system, while global financial services provider HSBC has effectively embraced a multichannel approach.

Omnichannel example

Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found great success utilizing an omnichannel system. Lesley University increased its customer satisfaction score from 65% to an astonishing 100% by adopting Freshworks . Lesley’s technology support services team uses Freshdesk Omni’s intuitive abilities to automate workflow and offer omnichannel support. No matter which channels their customers choose to contact them through, CSS’s omnichannel capabilities allow tickets to populate on a single dashboard, making it easier for Lesley’s team to respond to queries efficiently.

When in the field, Lesley’s agents make use of the mobile potential offered through CSS, as they’re able to pull up information easily on their mobile devices and recall user information when needed. It doesn’t matter if nobody is around when a customer reaches out, since each unattended call leads to a recording where individuals can leave queries. The request gets populated as a ticket on the same dashboard, which can then be easily picked up and resolved as soon as the support team resumes work. 

With Freshdesk Omni integration, all customer information was consolidated in one place, irrespective of channel origin. That’s how Lesley University successfully boosted agent productivity and increased customer satisfaction.

Multichannel example

Despite its limitations in cohesiveness and context retention, it’s still possible to offer excellent CXs when employing a multichannel approach. HSBC serves as one such success story, as they’ve leveraged an effective strategy that emphasizes WhatsApp as the anchor of their engagement blueprint.

Now, keep in mind, HSBC didn’t simply throw a dart at a bulletin board to determine that WhatsApp would be an integral component of its customer engagement gameplan; they conducted extensive research to determine that their target audience was already frequently utilizing the platform. 

Once this was identified, HSBC put its plan into motion, training live agents on how to best navigate the channel, while developing its own AI chatbot within WhatsApp. The bot empowered users to perform tailored credit simulations, then provided them with personalized quotes that included desired loan amounts, interest rates, and monthly payments.

The difference between omnichannel and multichannel support

As previously discussed, omnichannel customer service focuses on integration, consistency, and personalized experiences across channels, whereas multichannel support may lack coordination and unified customer context.

Some of the key distinctions between these omnichannel and multichannel approaches include:

• Unified customer experience: Omnichannel systems strive to provide customers with a cohesive experience across all channels, offering a unified view of their engagement history. Multichannel support, on the other hand, may deliver different experiences on each channel, leading to disjointed customer journeys.

• Customer data accessibility: In omnichannel support, customer data and context are readily accessible across all channels, promoting a holistic understanding of each individual's needs. Conversely, data in multichannel systems may be siloed, making it challenging for agents to access relevant information from other channels.

• Channel flexibility: Convenience is always prioritized in omnichannel systems by ensuring a seamless experience regardless of the channel used. While multichannel customer service does offer multiple channels for consumers to utilize, it may not prioritize consistency between them, leading to a less cohesive CX.

• Proactive engagement: Organizations are empowered to gather insights across different avenues with omnichannel customer service, allowing for proactive engagement and personalized assistance. Multichannel support typically lacks the data integration and analytics capabilities needed for preemptive outreach, limiting a company’s ability to anticipate customer needs effectively.

CSAT can be significantly affected by which approach your business decides to utilize; omnichannel satisfaction scores are approximately 67%, while multichannel solutions sit at around 28%. Most key metrics that are tracked are those that aim to reach customers, ensure a consistent experience with customer expectations, and measure the effectiveness of both the sales channels and marketing channels as part of the holistic corporate strategy.

Here’s a quick summary for you

By offering different support channels, companies can simplify the customer journey at all touchpoints. It doesn’t matter which channel individuals choose to contact you through; a message on social media is attended to with the same attentiveness as a live chat or email interaction. For simplified customer interactions, self-service has also gained popularity, reducing wait times for individuals to find answers, while also strengthening their overall CX.

Omnichannel customer service and multichannel support can both serve as useful solutions in the right environment, but they’re not the same thing. In omnichannel systems, every channel is connected; representatives can share information with one another through various methods, promoting a seamless experience for both internal teams and end-users. On the other hand, multichannel support doesn’t provide connected channels, resulting in restricted insight into past communications. This limitation may increase wait times and negatively impact churn due to disconnected interactions.

Enhance your omnichannel support capabilities with Freshworks today!

Freshworks’ Freshdesk Omni serves as an all-in-one support tool for organizations of any size and across all industries, providing an abundance of specialized features aimed to help optimize customer support initiatives.

With its abundance of collaboration tools, unified agent workspace, and robust automation features, Freshdesk Omni offers all of the resources that support agents require to serve customers to the best of their ability. Even more, its extensive omnichannel potential empowers companies to meet their customers wherever they may be, while delivering sufficient self-service options, a centralized customer view, and much more.

But don’t just take it from us; satisfied client Hassan K. lauds Service Suite’s AI-driven tools and omnichannel capacity, saying, “I like the use of AI to assist in paraphrasing and summarizing conversations. Works great and doesn't hog [sic] down the system resources. I like that I am able to use it for different channels, and thus helping our customers in the most efficient way.”

If there are any features your organization requires that CSS doesn’t offer, simply browse our wide-ranging Marketplace for access to hundreds of third-party apps that can be easily connected to the platform!