Customer Service Outsourcing: Multichannel Support vs. Omnichannel Support
This article discusses key differences between customer service outsourcing support types which are Multichannel Support vs. Omnichannel Support.
15 years ago the average consumer typically used two touch-points when buying an item and only 7% regularly used more than four. Today consumers use an average of almost six touch-points with nearly 50% regularly using more than four. (Marketing Week)
Effective customer service outsourcing through multiple customer communication channels is now possible with two types of customer service support delivery, namely, Omnichannel and Multichannel Support.
Multichannel Support
51% of companies today use at least eight channels to engage, communicate and interact with users. (lmistatic)
A multichannel support has customer service outsourcing agents providing support across multiple customer communication channels such as website, social media, phone, and messaging. The key differentiator of this support from omnichannel support is channels are not integrated.
A set of dedicated customer service outsourcing agents readily provide support and interaction at a particular channel. Another set handles a different channel. This type of support is beneficial for companies that are channel-focused and exclusive in terms of engagement and would prefer interactions and data coming from different channels to be independent of one another.
Omnichannel Support
75% of customers desire a consistent experience, regardless of how they engage a company (through social media, in person, by phone, etc.). (Salesforce)
Omnichannel Support is delivering customer service across all communication channels.
Communication channels are fully integrated in the customer service outsourcing workflow in Omnichannel Support. This allows agents to easily switch between channels in order to provide customer support depending on the customer’s channel of preference or availability.
Key benefits of an omnichannel include improved customer satisfaction, and customer retention, and corresponding metrics.
In fact 89% of customers are retained by companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement. (Source: Invesp, 2019).
Customer retention rates are 90% higher for omnichannel vs. single channel. (Omnisend, 2020)
Aside from these, omnichannel support also providers ease in accessibility, effective customer service outsourcing delivery and efficient call management, real-time monitoring, an efficient and consistent customer service and a seamless, augmented customer experience.
Planning to integrate this type of support into your customer service outsourcing operations? Read our article on how omnichannel support can improve customer experience.
Which Support Type is Better?
It is every business’ priority to meet customer satisfaction, to ensure smooth operations and to deliver excellent customer service.
Before deciding whether to integrate multichannel or omnichannel support into your contact center operations, it is important to understand current business processes, identify the customer needs and map the customer journey.
Your outsourcing provider must have the capability to adapt to their business process, provide excellent service delivery and offshoring management and look at opportunities that lead to customer experience and process improvement.
To make this possible there needs to be quantifiable measures, targeted process improvement and useful actionable insights to the organization.
Connext Global Solutions is a customer service outsourcing provider with industry-leading staffing solutions. The organization helps unlock client growth.
Connext provides world-class service to our clients standing by our 100% client satisfaction claim. This is backed up with over 350 quality, productivity, and utilization metrics per client, transparent and cost-effective pricing system and consultation sessions, allowing for an improved client experience.
Connext Global Solutions provides custom offshore staffing and process solutions to improve the productivity, cycle time, accuracy, and scalability to improve customer experience. Outsource with Connext today.
