Salesforce Omnichannel: Defining the Customer Experience

Every interaction with your brand should be part of a unique singular experience. A frictionless connection between digital and physical customer experiences will prove to be a key differentiator for achieving retail success.

Customers expect flexibility whenever they're seeking assistance from a brand's customer support services. There's a modern-day expectation on brands to facilitate support services across each digital channel, such as live chat on social media, websites, and through apps.

Meanwhile, there are still traditional customers who prefer traditional contact methods such as email, service portal tickets, and the classic customer service phone call.

Having the means to provide all of these options to your customers is crucial for achieving customer satisfaction, but customer service teams also need to be able to effectively manage the demand.

This is where Salesforce Omnichannel technology can help brands ensure that their internal operations remain connected and unified to manage a comprehensive omnichannel customer experience.

What is the Omnichannel Customer Experience

Brands are beginning to harness the power of omnichannel customer journey data to create more meaningful customer experiences and long-term customer retention.

Salesforce Omnichannel will begin to define your brand's customer experience once fully integrated; working towards creating singular, seamless interaction with consumers across the digital and physical channels at your disposal.

This includes all touchpoints along the customer lifecycle, from websites, social media and live chat, to follow-up emails, customer calls, and physical human assistance on the sales floor.

A successful implementation will offer plentiful methods to prevent any disconnect between departments and omnichannel processes from occurring. It provides teams from every department with the relevant insights regarding a specific customer.

For example, a customer originally messages through your website’s integrated chatbot about an issue, but then decided to contact your call centre.

As customers alternate from one channel to another, they don't expect to repeat themselves regarding the issue(s) they've encountered. An omnichannel experience assesses the overall customer experience, making it progressively smoother, consistent, and personalised for consumers.

What are Salesforce Omnichannel features?

Salesforce Omnichannel is a highly-flexible and customisable feature of its cloud services without the need to be configured with code. Salesforce users can utilise the omnichannel feature to prioritise work items to assign key work items to agents at pace.

Effectively manage your team's workload and define which agents can handle different types of assignments. Delegate one group of agents to respond to leads and sales inquiries, whilst another group is assigned to assisting customers with support or technical questions.

With Salesforce omni-features, it methodically streamlines customer service operations by transmitting requests to the most available and certified CS agents in the console, i.e. it assigns the agent that's best-suited to complete a specific task quickly and effectively.

Omni-features also enable real-time operational intelligence to support supervisors, monitor performance and maximise efficiency with the Omni-Supervisor feature. The Omni-Channel Performance Dashboard is also a practical add-on with pre-configured reports and dashboards for omnichannel integrators.

With Omnichannel enabled and configured, you can deploy multiple support channels for your customers. Salesforce features native Live Chat which can be embedded on any webpage and SMS support enabling customers to text from their smartphone while CS agents remain in their Salesforce console.

Salesforce also features Service Cloud Voice, a native CTI tool for handling and routing incoming calls via Salesforce.

How to improve the customer experience with Salesforce Omnichannel

The concept of omnichannel is reasonably comprehensible, but there are businesses who've still yet to manage the approach correctly. More industry leaders are transitioning from Multi-channel approaches, and instead dedicating time and resources into becoming omnichannel to provide an exemplary customer experience.

As omnichannel becomes increasingly commonplace, retailers who possess well-organised and optimised data will have the competitive edge.

Here's 3 key processes we suggest focusing on when it comes to maximising an omnichannel approach:

Understanding your Consumer Behaviour

Once your core consumer base is established, it's important to identify key patterns and behaviours, especially when it comes to where and how to reach them.

• What platforms they are most likely to be responsive to promotions and other mediums of communication?

• Is your demographic more likely to use TikTok or Facebook?

• Do they prefer assistance via social channels or live chat, over the phone, or are they more independent and would rather search for the solution through FAQ pages and community forums?

Salesforce's omni-features empower retailers with the tools to seamlessly manage case management, application development, and AI predictive analytics to pinpoint exactly where and when is best to reach specific consumer demographics.

Your data, analytics, and KPIs are among the most important tools your business can use to make the customer experience as smooth as possible.

Search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and email marketing campaigns all offer valuable insights into both potential and existing customers.

Create rich, unique Personalised Experiences for each Customer

Customer experience management is expected to create a connected, unified customer journey across every channel. When consumers switch between, say, a social and live-chat channel, they expect a seamless transition along their journey.

Ensure there's cohesive communication and production across all channels and departments so the risk of losing customers along their journey is significantly minimised.

Utilise CRM technology to ensure personalised journeys are performing to the standard your omnichannel strategy set - frequently observing purchase history and interactions, keep communication consistent, distribute relevant targeted ads and promotions and provide cross-channel services like click & collect / BOPIS.

Measure Customer Experience Data

Data and analytics give you the ability to view and learn the results of your efforts.

To accurately measure your omnichannel customer experience from a subjective point of view, collate feedback from your customers on key points throughout their journey with your brand. It can be through a call centre, live-chat, a quick online survey, or through social media pages or mobile applications. Correct management and organisation of the data you attain will help you effectively optimise your efforts and concentrate your strategy towards a better omnichannel experience. Research, analysis, and data-backed action provide a better understanding of your customers’ needs and expectations.

The Benefits of Salesforce Omnichannel

Salesforce's omnichannel integrations makes it far easier for retailers to reach to a continuously evolving marketplace. Beyond optimising workflows between touchpoints customer service agents, it also brings several advantages to the table:

• Streamlines workflows by connecting all brand channels into a single unified system.

• Automates the routing process between tasks & customer service team.

• Provides a 360° view of the customer by resuming conversations where they left off and offers increased support for customer service teams.

• Simplifies case organisation for each CS team member, enabling them to respond quickly & efficiently, and close cases with accuracy and agility.

• Optimised supervision for administrators or service managers; providing extensive statuses of open cases, waiting times and the best-suited agents for the issues at hand.

• Presents a consistent vision and candid image of the brand to drive customer loyalty, advocacy and overall brand reputation.

Wrap

By embracing omnichannel, brands can provide a comprehensive customer experience with a personalised approach to their customers; guiding them through a seamless, engaging customer journey through a sales or services funnel, that will ultimately drive repeat purchases, brand loyalty and growth.

Salesforce Omnichannel features will significantly improve your chances of achieving an omnichannel customer experience, which effectively creates satisfied customers who are in-turn, likelier to shop with you or entrust your brand with their relevant personal data.