How to harness the power of a multichannel support approach to meet or exceed changing consumer expectations.

To stay afloat in a digital economy, having a flourishing client service centre with exemplary customer support may not be enough. In order to stay on pace with your competition, your organization must invest in a multichannel approach to client service.

It’s important to provide quality service in an efficient manner, and long hold times in the telephone contact centre aren’t well tolerated. In fact, Forrester Research reports that 71 percent of adult consumers claim that an organization valuing their time is the most important defining aspect of a positive customer service experience. To truly show your customers that you value not only their business but also their time, you may need to take a multifaceted, multichannel approach to providing quality customer service.

Here are 10 ways offering multichannel support will truly enhance your client service model.

1. Staying Ahead of the Competition

In an online economy, companies that can only provide service on the phone will fall behind their competitors. Invest in social, email, call center services, and other support options to help stay ahead of rival firms.

2. Mobile-Friendly Means Business

Many consumers prefer to access websites and conduct business online via their smartphones. A truly multichannel service model will provide mobile users accessing your website via smartphone or tablet with a seamless support experience.

3. Proactive Support

In general, telephone contact centres get involved when customers have issues that require intervention to correct. That’s a reactive support model. The multichannel method allows your company to provide proactive support, interacting and intervening before problems arise instead of after. Consider this benefit of proactive support using live chat: the eDigital Research Customer Service Benchmark study found live online chat has the highest levels of customer satisfaction of any channel, with an impressive 73 percent approval rating.

4. Upgraded IVR Frees Up Telephone Agents

When souping-up your social options and leveraging live chat, take time to improve your interactive voice response (IVR) self-service menus to redirect callers with simple issues away from live agents. This will free up your live telephone support to handle more complex issues and increase efficiency in the contact centre.

5. Significant Savings

The multichannel model provides consumers with numerous information points that don’t require a phone call with an agent. Forrester Research discovered that live chat costs half as much as a service call. Redirecting simpler service needs to other channels will generate significant savings.

6. More Complete Customer Information

Once you implement a successful multichannel system, agents can access a complete customer profile, including interactions on all your available channels, from one unified location. The more info agents have, the better the customer experience.

7. Additional Sales Opportunities

Integrating social channels provides your firm with additional sales opportunities to help drive business. A thriving social media support system may grow your firm’s online influence and help open new sales opportunities not available in an exclusively telephone-based model.

8. Reduce Hold Times and Increase Service Levels

When agents can serve clients on multiple channels, telephone hold times for live agents are significantly reduced. Telephone service levels improve when inconsequential issues are redirected to more appropriate channels.

9. Improved Efficiency

Armed with multiple approaches to customer support, agents’ efficiency improves. Complex issues are still best managed via phone, but your support team can handle many more problems and inquiries online, keeping things running smoothly and efficiently in the telephone contact centre.

10. Balance Self-Service Options With Multichannel Solutions

Finally, some customers don’t appreciate self-service and always want live assistance. By balancing out your self-service options with alternative channels, you can provide solutions to meet all your varied customer preferences and upgrade your overall support model.

To really compete in a 24/7 online economy, providing excellent telephone customer support in the contact centre simply isn’t enough to stay competitive. The modern consumer wants multiple options through which he or she can resolve issues and inquiries. A multichannel approach to customer service will improve your support models and please consumers accustomed to instant access to online customer support.