Doing business in 2018 is much different from how things were a couple of decades ago. Consumers have become much more tech-savvy and many of them expect a lot more from the companies they do business with.
One of the defining characteristics of the modern consumer is that they are always contacting companies.
Today, there are six common touch points that customers use to interact with a company:
Phone, Email, Live Chat, Social Media, Helpdesk, Self Service.
Putting these together to create a great customer experience is the heart of multi-channel support. The days of working just a single channel of contact are long gone. You don’t need to offer all of them, but being able to do so at a decent level is a big plus.
A white paper from Oracle shows 27% of customers like instant messaging or chat boxes to appear online during their purchase, while a Forrester Research study says 44% of customers wanted a live person available to answer any questions during the purchase.
Multi-channel support is increasingly becoming a requirement rather than a luxury for any business, especially for companies doing e-commerce selling online. Conversocial notes that 88% of customers are not likely to buy from brands that leave concerns on social media unanswered.
Fortunately, setting up a platform for multi-channel support isn’t as daunting a task as it used to be. The strategy of covering all these touch points used to be the sole domain of e-commerce juggernauts and large enterprises, and the cost of providing such support was simply prohibitive for small and medium businesses.
With today’s technology, however, there are dedicated solutions available to get SMBs on board. Managed cloud solutions are available that take out all the guesswork in setting up a comprehensive platform of support.
A study on the industry by CJG Digital Marketing shows that businesses offering a multi-channel customer service program gain a 24% increase in their ROI. That should be enough of an incentive for any business to take a look at this approach, and that’s not even considering the good will you get from the increased levels of engagement and satisfaction of your customers.
If you follow the trends well and identify where your customers are active, you can offer the proper channels that they love using and reap the rewards.