A сustomer-oriented approach is the primary strategy of every modern business. That is why customer support is impossible to ignore. Present-day customers have lots of alternatives to communicate with businesses, and, as a result, сompanies have more opportunities to grow their customer experiences.
The new era of technologies, marketing strategies, and customer support outsourcing gave a new wave of opposition: single-channel vs. omnichannel vs. multichannel vs. cross-channel. Every company CEO, founder, and marketing manager should become acquainted with these terms and their differences to build an efficient customer experience strategy.
Let’s reveal differences in single-channel, cross-channel, multichannel, and omnichannel customer support services.
Single-Channel Support Definition
Single-channel support is a great way to provide quality customer care via a single support channel.
It means that a customer can communicate with a business to get answers to questions in the form of dialogue via either chat or phone. Single-channel support systems help show an openness to listen and be a part of the two-way conversation.
Facts about single channel support:
- 93% of customers switch companies at least once per year due to poor customer service.
- Channel support is important to not allow customers to miss buying opportunities as they easily switch to alternative channels.
- Channel marketing support is cost-effective, increases brand recognition, and creates greater volume and variety in marketing campaigns.
Important: your single channel should be of great quality. No technical problems are acceptable.
Conclusion: Customer consistency is really expensive, but the support channel provides you with an endless opportunity to resolve any issue before the customer decides to switch to a competitor.
Multichannel Customer Support
Multichannel support helps your company meet the needs and wants of a highly differentiated customer base.
Multichannel is based on the assumption that customers have their preferred ways of interacting with a company. Companies utilizing the multichannel strategy adopt two or more channels to engage their consumers.
Facts about multichannel support:
- Social media and email are the most popular and individual channels for end-users to get support.
- Providing multi-channel support offers an easy way to capture your customers and honor how they prefer to interact with your business.
- This approach seeks to maximize the performance of each channel and engage customers across multiple touchpoints.
Important: every channel should have its strategy and be managed separately.
Conclusion: Focus on omnichannel support if you want to easily loop in others, drive stronger customer relationships, increase revenue streams, and improve operational performance.
Case of Attendify Startup
Being a startup, Attendify tried to manage its customer support by itself. But the fast-growing quantity of customers and complicated requests from all parts of the world forced this company to look for new solutions of not using in-house resources.
“Founders and CEOs of every startup should pay attention to business depths without spending time on lead generation, customer support, and virtual assistance,” – says Michael Balyasny, CEO of Attendify.
WOW24-7 helped Attendify to handle these functions.
“WOW24-7 is the team of experts which streamlined their business process by back-office solutions and by providing multichannel support. For these guys, every call matters. And for them, every call matters. Thanks to WOW24-7, we’ve managed to tap into unknown areas and get more revenue opportunities.”
Omnichannel Customer Support
Omnichannel support can be described as multichannel as it utilizes all available support channels.
A customer can communicate with an agent by all possible channels: via chat, telephone, email, etc. Omnichannel support allows you to choose the right communication channel for the right customer.
Facts about omnichannel support:
- It is based on the belief that most customers navigate between many touchpoints to make a single purchase.
- Omnichannel recognizes the customer’s need to explore various channels and places him in the center of the strategy.
- The focus is on building a stronger relationship between consumers and the brand.
Important: By taking this approach, companies must ensure consistent messages across all channels.
Conclusion: The omnichannel approach inter-relates every channel to engage with customers as a holistic whole to ensure they have an excellent overall experience with the brand throughout each channel.
Cross-channel Customer Support
Cross-channel means that you offer several touchpoints across different stages of customer interaction with your product/service.
Cross-channel customer support involves taking all channels & devices into consideration to interact with the audience. It’s about optimizing every channel to create a seamless and consistent customer journey from one touchpoint to the next.
Facts about cross-channel support:
- Rather than executing emails & social posts one at a time, support representatives strategize from the beginning, making minor changes along the way as needed.
- This approach provides a more enjoyable experience for customers across all touchpoints with your brand.
- More touchpoints incline potential clients to more purchases.
Important: Integrating channels in one strategy helps customer support gather data and get a single view of every customer to serve better anytime, anywhere, through any device.
Conclusion: Familiar look, feel, & messaging, along with relevant content that addresses customer needs across all channels, helps your audience feel they truly know your brand and you truly know them.
Difference Between Omnichannel and Multichannel Support
- Companies with well-defined omnichannel customer experience strategies achieve a 91% higher year-over-year customer retention rate on average compared to organizations with multichannel programs in place. These organizations also average a 3.4% increase in customer lifetime value, while those without omnichannel programs actually diminish customer lifetime value by 7% year-over-year.
- Saas customer support is usually multichannel while eCommerce business players prefer to apply the omnichannel approach.
- Multichannel marketing vs omnichannel says that the first one provides limited communication or sharing of information between channels. If you strive for customer-oriented marketing, you should better choose omnichannel support to avoid many request tickets in different places.
Conclusion
Knowing the peculiarities of single-channel vs. multichannel vs. cross-channel vs. omnichannel support is crucial if your company starts choosing the proper solution. However, more important than terminology is providing a consistent and relevant support strategy to your customers. It is not the description that matters but the stellar customer experience.
Contact us if you’re looking for professional support that knows how to interact with customers using multiple channels. Book a call to get a detailed consultation.
