How to take your customer engagement strategy one step further

By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz

Imagine the following scenario. You buy a product or service from a local CSP. You start using it and everything seems fine until one day you face a certain problem. So you open your email and write them a letter explaining your problem in detail. A few days pass and no response comes from them, so now you decide to follow up with them by phone, only to find out that the customer service representative has no idea about the email you sent a few days ago, so you have no choice but to explain your problem all over again.

This is a situation nearly all of us have been through, and we usually tend to blame it on the weakness or lack of proper administration, thus often causing us to dismiss this CSP as bad a not worthy of our money. But, why don’t we ask ourselves what exactly happened there?

The CSP offers its customers multiple channels of communication, including email, phone, and a physical store or office. So what seems to be the problem?

To answer this question, we need to distinguish between two models of customer experience: The multichannel model, and the omnichannel model.

What is multichannel?

Multichannel is a model in which a CSP provides various channels through which customers can reach out to it for help or feedback. And while this is a good thing in itself, it has one major problem: These channels, are simply not connected and integrated. For that reason, the CSR who handles customers’ phone calls will hardly have any idea of an email or a social media message sent by the same customer some time ago. As a result, he or she will work under the assumption that this customer is seeking customer service for the very first time.

“Aha! That explains it!” you might be wondering. But then the next question is: How do we overcome this snag? And this is where the omnichannel model comes to the rescue!

What is omnichannel and why does it matter?

Much like multichannel, omnichannel also features offering a wide range of channels of communication for the customer to use according to their convenience. The one critical difference between the two models, however, is that in the case of omnichannel, these multiple channels connect and interact systematically with each other through a powerful CRM system.

Going back to the scenario above, had the CSR been working within a system that supports an omnichannel, they would have likely had a screen in front of them with a full-fledged dashboard that shows them a detailed history of all that customer’s previous interactions including emails, phone calls, and even his or her social media sentiment.

So, what would be the core advantage of omnichannel over multichannel?

The omnichannel process

In light of what we discussed above, the core value that omnichannel brings to the table which multichannel does not is in achieving the true meaning of customer-centricity. In multichannel, all channels of communication between the customer and his/her service provider work in isolation from each other. This lack of interaction between channels hinders the convenience and effectiveness of the communication process, thus taking its toll on customer engagement.

In omnichannel, however, the picture looks more like a dynamic web of channels collaborating systematically to serve your customers and ensure their utmost convenience and satisfaction.

ESKADENIA’s telecom software systems omnichannel take omnichannel support very seriously. For more information, please take a look at our assortment of telecom products, particularly ESKA Digital CRM, ESKA Self-care.