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March 15, 2024

5 Best Practice Tips For Managing Multichannel Customer Support And How to Measure It

In an era where businesses are expected to be present across several channels and provide a seamless experience, having only one or two channels for support is never an ideal strategy. For this reason, businesses are increasingly adopting multichannel customer support to meet the diverse needs of their customers.

According to the study, 90% of customers expect brand interaction across multiple channels. 

Due to the rise of these platforms, companies must effectively manage customer support across various communication channels, including social media, chat, email, and phone.

It's also increasingly essential for providing quick, easy experiences on the platforms that your customers choose. 

Therefore, to engage customers digitally, your company must have a multichannel strategy and maintain consistency across all channels. 

In this blog post, we'll explore 5 best practice tips for managing multi-channel customer support to enhance customer satisfaction.

This article includes:

  • What is multi-channel customer support?
  • What are the key benefits of multichannel customer support?
  • 5 best practice tips for multichannel customer support
  • Conclusion

What is multi-channel customer support?

Businesses employ multi-channel customer support as a tactic to give customers many, sometimes simultaneous, channels of communication with their support team.

However, every customer interacts with companies differently and may not contact a company through the same channel, which makes this kind of support essential. 

Multichannel customer service integrates various platforms like live chat, social media, email, and knowledge base to enhance clients' digital experience.

Live platform can help you unify and centralize communication from all channels in a simple-to-use way. 

What are the key benefits of multichannel customer support?

Multi-channel customer support is crucial for businesses as it allows them to meet the diverse preferences of their customers. The statistic shows that 62% of customers like to interact with brands via various digital channels.

Customers will always receive value when your business is accessible through various channels. 

There are several ways that multichannel help may benefit your company. 

  • Faster resolution time – Companies that use a multichannel support approach may respond to customer inquiries quickly, which speeds up the resolution process. 
  • Customer convenience – Customers want to be able to interact freely with brands that are available anywhere and whenever they want them to be, across a variety of channels.  Furthermore, providing support across multiple channels ensures that your business can cater to the varied preferences of your customer base.
  • Consistent customer experience - A company may provide customers the option to switch between channels and get their questions answered by utilizing a variety of customer service channels. Engaging customers through their preferred communication method enhances their positive experience and strengthens their trust in your brand.
  • Scalability of support – The benefits of having various channels for customer service include the ability to scale support as and when needed in the future to meet the ever-increasing demands of customers.  

5 best practice tips for multichannel customer support

Let's look at 5 best practice tips that you can use right now.

1. Identify Your Preferred Customer Channels  

Customers want to communicate with businesses that assist several platforms. They now have the option to switch to any channel and still benefit from the interactions. 

A variety of channels are required for your company to attract customers and show them that you are aware of their preferences. 

In addition, utilizing popular channels like live chat, social media, email, knowledge bases, and self-service tools is crucial for aligning with your brand vision and maximizing its potential.

The following are best practices for determining customer channels:

  • Before launching your multi-channel support program, talk with your customers and create a solution that benefits them as well as you. To effectively support your customers, it's crucial to identify their preferred channels and whether to interact personally or conduct a survey for insights. Once this is established, focus on providing them with the most effective support.
  • Ensuring amazing customer experiences and keeping consistency across support channels require the use of common workflow processes and knowledge bases. 

2. Integrate data to provide better customer service

One of the key challenges in multichannel customer support is maintaining consistency and accuracy across various channels. Implementing a unified customer data management system is crucial. 

Data integrations enable customer support teams to gain a comprehensive view of customers, including purchase history, support interactions, and product usage. Centralizing all customer data will enable your team to offer superior customer support.

Therefore, agents may continue where the conversation ended, which minimizes frustration and increases productivity while ensuring a smooth and personalized experience for the customer. 

3. Prioritize the customer experience across all channels

Timing is crucial when it comes to support. Your customers will have an excellent experience as a result of faster response times.

Saying it loud makes it seem easy, but how can you do it? Focus on your KPIs.

However, the improved customer experience not only expedites issue resolution but also enhances key metrics for the company, such as:

  • Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
  • Customer effort score (CES)
  • Net promoter score (NPS) / and verbal referrals
  • Enhanced customer retention and less churn 

Related article: 7 Customer Service KPIs You Need to Track in 2024

4. Include a Human Touch  

According to the statistics, chatbots can handle 80% of routine customer questions.

Although customers value self-service and multichannel solutions, it can be risky to remove humans from customer "conversations," especially if the customer is dissatisfied. 

Customers will always need to communicate with someone to clear up any questions they may have in particularly complicated scenarios. 

To ensure the best customer experience, it is essential to analyze each encounter and identify situations that require the "human touch."  Armed with this data, the contact center can maximize adviser availability and assign customers to the appropriate advisor.

5. Offer Awesome Mobile Support Experience

People tend to do business using their phones rather than a desktop computer. A significant number of potential customers are probably leaving your website if it isn't mobile-friendly.

Hence, mobile traffic is a crucial customer service channel, requiring businesses to develop effective support strategies to capitalize on this crucial tool.

Conclusion

Utilizing a multi-channel customer care strategy can boost customer satisfaction while also enabling you to service more customers in less time. 

Employing the 5 best practice tips mentioned above will enable businesses to provide customer-centric, streamlined service. Also, embracing these practices will not only enhance customer satisfaction but also contribute to building lasting relationships and fostering brand loyalty.

Companies must adapt to market trends and keep up with the increasing investment in various customer communication channels.

Learn more about how the Live product family can help you support and improve your customer experience strategy.

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