Customer service is crucial to businesses that strive to attract new and retain existing customers. It is needed because people usually contact businesses to make inquiries and get information on their products or services. Existing customers reach out to make complaints, share concerns, return items, use warranties, upgrade their subscriptions, and communicate about other things.
Businesses that can handle incoming communication effectively will have an advantage over their competitors in the market. To gain this competitive advantage, companies implement multichannel support.
What is Multichannel Support?
Multichannel support is a consumer service strategy that businesses use to provide support to new and existing customers through different channels. These channels typically include social media, email, text messages, phone calls, and live chat.
This means that people can communicate with the company through the channel that is most convenient for them, instead of going out of their way to get the support they need. Multichannel support makes potential customers feel included because the average person will prefer to communicate with a company’s customer support team on the platform they already use.
Some business owners tend to mix up multichannel support with omnichannel support. While both strategies allow companies to be present on different platforms, omnichannel support synchronizes the communication across all platforms, so customers can start a conversion on one platform and continue it on another.
Benefits of Multichannel Support
Companies and their customers both enjoy the benefits of multichannel support. Some of those benefits are outlined as follows:
Increased brand awareness
By being present on multiple platforms, businesses increase their brand awareness. This is particularly evident on social media platforms. Companies that establish themselves on large social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter will be exposed to billions of users daily. Their target audience amongst those users can see their promotional or regular posts and respond directly with their inquiries and complaints. They can also send them a direct message to get a more detailed and personalized response.
Greater convenience
It is convenient for consumers to have the opportunity to contact companies on different platforms. For example, someone who primarily uses Facebook will rather stay there and communicate with customer support staff instead of sending emails and waiting hours or days for a response.
Widens customer base
Companies that have potential customers on different platforms can attract them if they have their customer service staff present to provide the support they need to learn more about the products and services the business offers.
Proactive issue resolution
It helps to resolve customer issues proactively, and multichannel support makes this possible. Businesses use it to reach out to many people on different channels. For example, a company can send emails to their first-time customers to get feedback on their products. They can also find instances where people mention them on social media and respond with questions about their product experience. These gestures make customers feel like the company cares about them.
Challenges of Multichannel Support
Multichannel support has several benefits as outlined above, but companies that implement it usually face these challenges:
Inconsistent customer experiences
The customer support teams handling communication on different platforms are usually siloed. This means that they work independently, thereby giving customers different experiences depending on the channel through which they contact the business. For example, the email support team might have a mode of operation that differs from the team that handles social media communications. The different experiences might make the businesses seem disjointed to customers talking to them on different platforms.
Needless repetition
When customers switch platforms while communicating with a business that uses the multichannel support approach, they have to repeat all the important details they have laid out to the last customer support staff they communicated with. This can be inconvenient and make people impatient because they will prefer to have their issue resolved as quickly as possible.
Difficult System integration
It is difficult to integrate multiple customer support channels and if not done correctly, it will be difficult to facilitate a seamless customer service experience across the different channels.
Expensive skill development
Businesses need to train their customer support staff to be able to communicate effectively on different platforms. All their support personnel have to learn to be professional and provide top-quality service regardless of the platform they are responding to customers on. This takes time and requires resources that some businesses might not have in abundance.
Difficulty in balancing resource allocation while scaling
As a company scales and adds more customers, it will have to expand its multichannel support team accordingly. It can be challenging to make sure all channels are adequately staffed without over-committing resources that could have been spent growing the business.
Complex data analysis
It is challenging to manage and analyze data collected from multiple platforms to improve customer service. Companies need sophisticated tools that can gather, unify, and analyze data effectively to produce useful insights.
Multichannel Support Best Practices
Businesses that want to implement multichannel support the right way should consider the following best practices:
Use channels that align with customer service goals
Companies have different customer service goals and it is best that they use channels that are closely aligned with their goals. Some common customer service goals are to increase revenue, customer retention, brand loyalty, or customer satisfaction levels. Depending on the business model of the company in question, the channel most suited to each goal will be different.
To create an effective multichannel support strategy, businesses should determine how they want to respond to inquiries, complaints, and other types of communication from their customers. The strategy will determine how much resources they will allocate to each channel and the kind of outbound communication they will disseminate.
Treat every channel as important
It is best to treat every channel as important because consumers prefer to use some over others. For example, some people would rather send an email than call a business help line because they are introverted. If said business does not have sufficient support personnel to respond to emails, the customer’s email will go unanswered for several hours or days. This will make them unhappy and consider approaching a competitor.
Sufficient resources should be allocated to all support channels, and every customer should be treated equally. The resource allocation should be regularly reviewed and adjusted based on customer feedback, needs, and preferences.
Make the transmission between support channels seamless
Some forms of customer support can be better relayed over some channels than others. For example, if someone buys a product and has issues installing it, that problem can be better resolved over the phone than through email. Companies should make their customer support easy to transition from one platform to another, so they can help people as quickly and seamlessly as possible.
An instance of this can be seen when someone sends a direct message to their internet service provider on Twitter to complain about being unable to access the internet. The customer support staff that receives their message might ask for their phone number and give it to another staff member who will call them to resolve the issue.
To facilitate this seamless transition, the support staff member who calls should have all the information that the customer has already relayed to the person who answered their direct messages.
Make every interaction personal
By personalizing every interaction a company has with its customers, it can create a bond between both parties. People will feel like the company cares about them and does not see them as a random person they can make money from. They should address every customer on all support channels by name and use the right language and tone that is reflective of the platform they are communicating on.
Personalizing customer interactions cannot be overstated because everybody wants to be treated with respect and have their needs taken care of. It also allows companies to maintain professionalism at all times.
Ask for feedback
Asking for feedback helps improve multichannel support because companies will use it to find out how satisfied customers are with the support they provide. They can get feedback from customers on all channels by sending them links to leave a review, answer a survey, write a comment, rate their conversation, and leave a suggestion after every customer service interaction.
After receiving feedback, the company should make adjustments to serve people better. This will increase customer satisfaction because it shows that the company cares about the people they serve.
Endnote
Helpful and reliable customer support makes customers develop good feelings towards a company. It’s in every company’s best interest to make this available on multiple platforms, so all potential and existing customers can get the support they need. Many of them recognize this, which is why a good number are embracing multichannel support.
To use multichannel support effectively, it is recommended that companies follow the best practices outlined above. Some of those best practices can help them tackle the challenges that come with implementing multichannel support and ensure that customers get the best experience possible.
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