6 min read The competition for consumer attention is increasing by the day.
Be it acquiring customers or keeping them engaged throughout to boost repeat business, companies now need to do more than just offer a good product/service.
They need to focus on building connections with their customers and that happens only when you’re able to proactively converse with them.
This is where the importance of engaging customers where they are the most active comes into play.
In this post, we’re going to discuss all about multichannel customer support and how custom AI workflows can help bring efficiency.
Table of Contents
What is multichannel customer support?
Multichannel customer support refers to businesses offering assistance to customers across multiple channels/ platforms. This typically includes channels like email, phone, live chat, social media, messaging apps and self-service portals.
The goal of multichannel customer support is to let customers choose their preferred channel of communication, enhancing accessibility and convenience.
Why is multichannel customer support important?
Here are some reasons why businesses are setting up multichannel customer support:
- Higher customer satisfaction – Almost 60% of customers expect businesses to respond to queries over their preferred mode of communication. Multichannel support ensures customers get help promptly.
- Improved retention and loyalty – 88% of customers are likely to stay engaged with a business and make more purchases after a positive customer service experience. Multichannel support helps resolve queries faster by using channels a customer is already active on.
- Wider audience reach – When consumers are aware of your multichannel presence, they become 5x more likely to reach out and engage. This can help businesses widen their market reach.
- Consolidated data – Multichannel customer support solutions help businesses centralize data collection. This can help understand customer preferences better, leading to improved products, services, and customer experiences.
What are the different channels you need for multichannel customer support?
Some of the popular channels that businesses need to include in their multichannel customer support strategy include:
- Email – Ideal for detailed queries and formal communication.
- Phone – For real-time problem resolution and personalized assistance.
- Live chat – To provide on-site resolution for website visitors.
- Social media – Suited for addressing public queries, reviews, or complaints on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter) and others.
- Messaging apps – For personalized assistance through apps like SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and others.
- Self-service portals – Knowledge bases, FAQs, and tutorials for customers who prefer to resolve queries on their own.
What are the different ways to use AI and automation for multichannel customer support?
Keeping track of and managing customer support across multiple channels can be tough when done manually. Here’s how AI and automation are enabling businesses:
1. Instant responses for repetitive queries
Businesses can set up chatbots for repetitive queries, resolving them with information from FAQs and knowledge bases. This helps them resolve customer queries faster without adding to the workload of human agents.
2. Timely responses and follow-ups
Irrespective of the channel a query is posted on, businesses can use automation to acknowledge and follow up with the requests. With the use of AI, they can further categorize issues for streamlined management.
3. Conversation monitoring and engagement
AI systems can help businesses actively monitor the different channels they are present on. AI can identify, engage, and respond to brand mentions, complaints, or questions in real-time, consolidating the queries into a centralized dashboard.
4. Detailed sentiment analysis
Understanding how customers feel has been entirely based on individual assumptions. But with AI, businesses can now analyze the tone of voice, the language used, and other parameters to truly understand customer sentiment. This can help businesses prioritize urgent issues.
5. Customer query routing
AI can help businesses understand the type of query, and customer sentiment and identify the right department or agent to handle the query. This can help trigger the right set of automated workflows to resolve queries as well as manage agent productivity.
6. Predictive customer assistance
Automations enable reactive customer support. But with the addition of AI, businesses can proactively anticipate customer needs based on browsing behavior, past interactions, and other parameters.
7. Agent assistance for productivity
Typically a human agent would require sifting through knowledge bases, FAQs, and other resources to answer queries. With the help of AI, businesses can set up co-pilots that can do the groundwork faster, suggesting the right responses and resources to resolve a request faster.
8. Self-serve support enhancements
With more consumers choosing to resolve queries on their own, AI enhancements can make self-serve platforms easier to use. This can help customers reach the right resources faster and get answers without having to spend hours or reach out for human assistance.
9. Unified customer profiles and analytics
AI-powered customer support automation tools can help consolidate data across channels for actionable insights and improved personalization. This helps businesses identify the type of queries coming from different channels to segment customers, their strategy strengths and weaknesses, and improve the support experiences.
Also read: How does AI help with decision-making in customer support
10. Enhanced personalization
Automated systems and AI can help customer support teams personalize conversations based on data. This can include previous conversations, the nature of past interactions, purchase preferences and patterns, demographics, and other data. One-to-one personalization – be it in terms of context or localization, can help businesses deliver a positive experience at scale across multiple channels.
Also read: How to balance AI and human agents for optimal customer support
Conclusion
Offering multichannel customer support is becoming a must.
But managing conversations across channels and streamlining resources to efficiently address queries is easier said than done.
The only way to implement an effective customer support strategy is to find a solution that easily integrates with your existing tech stack for an easy flow of information – be it your CRM, knowledge bases, marketing automation tools, or CMS.
Auralis AI helps you understand customer journey data, integrating with your existing systems and setting up custom workflows to automate more than 70% of your multichannel customer support strategy.
To know more, book a demo.
