Omnichannel communication: An ultimate guide

Communication with your customers is the key to business growth. But wanton and meaningless communication can often be interpreted as spam, leaving customers dissatisfied. You should strive to establish effective and meaningful communication.

Customer engagement should add value to your business and the overall customer experience. But you can use more than one mode of communication for all your messages. Imagine sending an entire catalog of items over Twitter or WhatsApp. Or posting a short message over email. Each communication platform specializes in delivering a certain form or style of message. Forcing everything through a singular platform is an unhealthy business practice. So, how do you get around this?

Omnichannel Communication is one of the foremost customer-centric strategies businesses use worldwide to achieve cross-platform communications. You must understand that your customers are everywhere. And to be a successful business, you need to be where they are, too. Every touchpoint you can exploit is another chance to acquire or retain new customers. By implementing omnichannel software, companies have seen a 9.5% yearly increase in annual revenue compared to the 3.4% of those that still need a solid omnichannel strategy. Omnichannel communication allows you to reach customers at every touchpoint possible without appearing as spam. Let us look at this in more detail.

What is omnichannel communication?

In simple terms, omnichannel communication entails customer interactions across different channels. This includes WhatsApp, Facebook, other social media, SMS, and other platforms your target audience frequents. This is made possible through omnichannel software.

Consistency creates authority and credibility. If you can cohesively manage all your touchpoints, your customer lifetime value (CLV) will grow exponentially. This is propelled by the fact that customers can carry out conversations without being restrained by the platform.

Unifying your customer experience also leads to consistent feedback from your customer's side. With omnichannel communication, you aim to project the same brand voice and provide similar experiences. The prime focus of this strategy revolves around the customer, not the product. While omnichannel communication extends to brick-and-mortar stores, we shall limit our scope to digital communication.

What does an omnichannel communication strategy look like?

Now, how do you go about executing an omnichannel communication strategy? There are three core tactics that you need to draw your attention towards:

The first thing you must address is the communication channels your audience uses. There might be an overlap between the ones you are already using to communicate and those you need to establish. 

The next step is to create an effective communication strategy. You must implement tools like live chat, chatbot, knowledge base, etc. These tools provide your customers with a seamless and instant response system. The best way to do this is using a professional-grade Customer Service Suite. 

Finally, you need to set up a report and analysis system. Keep measuring both your business metrics and your customers' interactions. Improve in the areas you lack and maintain consistency in the platforms where your customers engage most. These reports should include high engagement times and customer priority as well.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel communication: Key differences

Multichannel communication, unlike omnichannel, is centered around promoting products or services. Instead of customers being its focal point, it prioritizes promoting the product or service to the customer without much personalization. It does not account for customer preference regarding time, length of shared material, or platform. It is more of a brute-force approach than the subtle CLV-improving approach of omnichannel communication. 

In a multichannel approach, various channels are used independently. This may result in a fragmented experience that starkly contrasts the omnichannel's seamless and consistent experience with the customer at its center, as in an omnichannel chat.

A few more differences within these approaches make omnichannel the superior strategy. Take a look at this table to understand the key differences:

A few more differences within these approaches lie in fields such as:

• Personalization: Whereas with the multichannel approach, customer’s needs and preferences are secondary as long as the message is delivered, omnichannel communication is aimed at delivering personalized service to each and every customer.

• Data collection: Multichannel communication may come with disjointed data points that make it hard to understand customer insights, whereas an omnichannel approach focuses on a unified data collection approach that packets everything into a singular portal

• Decision insights: The multichannel communication approach is not on par with the insights that come with omnichannel communication. Better data collection, ultimately translates to better insights into customers.

• Customer loyalty: The omnichannel communication approach generally guarantees better customer loyalty because of a customer-centric approach. The multichannel approach can be seen as spammy and may lead to company-customer friction.

• Consistency: Omnichannel communication is extremely consistent with brand voice over multiple channels compared to a scattered multichannel approach.

Responsiveness: Unified channels, as in the omnichannel approach, allow for well-maintained pipelines and quick responses. Disjointed channels in the multichannel approach can lead to miscommunication and late responses.

Benefits of an omnichannel communication strategy

Now that we have an idea of what an omnichannel communication strategy is and how it functions let us take a look at some of the benefits it provides for all business types and sizes:

• The most significant benefit omnichannel communication brings is a consistent customer experience. You can solidify your position as a trusted brand by providing a cohesive and integrated experience to your customers. Your customers will feel more inclined to reach you through various platforms, increasing your acquisition and retention. You can easily demolish inefficient communication silos, saving on monetary and temporal resources.

• You can also provide personalized experiences to your customers. Your business can leverage the data you generate on each customer to understand them better and meet their specific needs. 49% of buyers have made impulse purchases after receiving personalized experiences.

• Omnichannel chat is highly compatible with automation systems. You can easily integrate chatbots and other AI tools to automate mundane and simple tasks and customer issues. Good-quality chatbots are also capable of excellent deflection and escalation. They can easily hand over control to human representatives if complicated problems arise. 

• The longer your company takes the time to reply, the less likely it is for the customer to engage with you further. Through omnichannel communication, you can ensure quick response and fast resolution. Moreover, multiple team members or members of different teams can collaborate on queries and issues to resolve them much faster than usual.

• Omnichannel communication is also a godsend for data analysis. Imagine if the data from all your channels and sources can be combined and represented in one platform in an orderly fashion. You can easily sift through it to highlight pain points and places that require more investment. 

• You can differentiate yourself from your competitors by implementing a solid omnichannel communication strategy. 81% of organizations say that customer experience is a competitive differentiator.

Through these benefits and many more, omnichannel communication can become key to your success in this volatile market.

Why is omnichannel communication strategy important for businesses?

By now, you know how omnichannel communication can greatly benefit businesses. But many people may see it as an optional advantage. However, the case is quite the opposite. Survival in the current business landscape necessitates adopting a strong omnichannel communication strategy. Without it, businesses suffered, and profits dropped. 

But don’t just take our word for it. We have the numbers to support our claims. Let’s take a look at why omnichannel communication strategy is of utmost importance to businesses: 

Customer retention

Customer retention is essential to any business. Acquiring a new customer can be five times as costly as retaining an old one. Moreover, companies that increased customer retention by just 5% saw an astonishing 25-95% increase in profits. Having said that, traditional communication techniques are not performing up to the mark when satisfying this metric. 

On the other hand, omnichannel communication has picked up the slack and accelerated retention rates. An Aberdeen Strategy Research Study showcased that businesses that could adopt a good omnichannel strategy could retain 89% of their customers, along with a 9.5% year-over-year increase in annual revenue. 

Brand cohesion and visibility

Customers want consistency. Reports show that no matter how good the initial service may be if you don’t have a comparable website or mobile app, 57% of customers won’t recommend your business to others. Having a consistent brand image over multiple channels drastically improves your rate of being recognized and the visibility of your overall brand. 

Moreover, it is common sense that the more channels you can access, the further you can spread your brand’s name. 

Operational efficiency

How often have you lost deals or wasted copious amounts of time due to miscommunication? If you want to avoid this or stray away from the same in the future, try omnichannel messaging. It helps to reduce friction between teams and departments and streamlines workflow. By demolishing unnecessary communication silos, you can put an end to repetitive ticket generation, complaints, and subsequent delays. 

Increased sales

A unified customer experience means buyers spend more. 86% of buyers are open to paying more for a great customer experience. Omnichannel communication can help you with this as it utilizes customer data from various touchpoints, enabling you to provide the best service possible. Being a customer-centric approach, it does not cause a rift between you and your customers either. 

Strategic resource allocation

Through the data generated by omnichannel communication, you can understand which areas require more investment and which must be high priority. You can invest in these areas accordingly rather than just shooting in the dark. 

Increased scalability and adaptability

With all the growth that you will be experiencing through omnichannel communication, you might think it will be difficult to scale your business. But fret not; the best omnichannel communication systems have excellent scaling options. Moreover, since you are privy to the demands and needs of your customers, you can easily adapt to any unforeseen changes and retain both your customers and your revenue.

In a nutshell

Omnichannel Communication is paramount for business success, given the current customer experience landscape. With it, you create a unified customer experience that is customer-centric and, hence, does not register as spam with your customers. It provides many benefits that will make your business soar. 

However, choosing an omnichannel communication strategy means making a prudent software selection. Go for one that provides a complete package, such as the Freshworks Customer Service Suite. It comes powered with the latest GenAI tech to support your conversational and advanced ticketing needs. Another important aspect is its powerful integration capabilities. After all, you should be able to utilize all the apps you already do and more in conjunction with your Customer Service Suite. 

Other factors the Freshworks Customer Service Suite takes care of include unified inboxes across email, call, chat, and messenger apps, team performance indicators, and auto-priority determination inboxes that provide detailed customer journey maps. And finally, a quick setup and installation to let you get started in no time for real-time customer communication.

If you want all that and more at a reasonable price with no compromise on quality, try Freshworks Customer Service Suite for free today.