Multichannel to Omnichannel Experience: A How to Guide
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‘Omnichannel’ and ‘customer-centric’ are a couple of raging buzzwords in multiple industries. They have emerged as an inventive strategy to improve the customer experience and restructure business operations. LIMRA observed in its 2020 Insurance Barometer Study that in-person insurance policy buyers have reduced from 64% in 2011 to 41% in 2020. Meanwhile, the number of online buyers doubled from 17% to 29%.
Considering such a colossal contrast over the decade, the evolution of technologies in different sectors encouraged policy buyers to expect the same level of seamless experience as they receive in retail. Customers expect insurers to offer them the accessibility to all their channels in a hyperconnected ecosystem. And in order to deliver what exactly your customers want, insurers need to adopt an omnichannel experience strategy.
Is your business ready to adopt omnichannel?
For omnichannel success, your business needs direct communication with your customers across a wide array of channels. To achieve a seamless experience for every channel your customers use, you need to evaluate your mobile access, the accessibility to personalized agent interaction, channel coverage, and a lot more.
Touchpoint coverage
Having access to multiple touchpoints helps you take your first step towards a winning omnichannel customer experience (CX) strategy. Your approach should have a perfect blend of traditional and modern-day interaction channels, regardless of the medium. It should be inclusive of self-service options such as AI-powered chatbots, a community forum, and various other touchpoints, which can rapidly take over the preferred service channel for most customers.
Integrated experience
Customers lose their interest in your brand if they have to repeat the same information time and again. Companies having a central repository for all customer and behavioral data address this issue with ease. The process goes beyond capturing real-time data and covers customer history. This ensures that all the customer service agents will be able to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience.
Mobile access
Ericsson & The Radicati Group forecasted that the global audience of smartphone users is to reach 7.33 billion by 2025. These smart, portable devices empower users with quick connectivity and immediacy, radically reshaping the way users interact with the service and product providers, be it insurers or agents. Smartphones intensify user demands for consistent and smooth service.
Customers expect brands to offer them multiple channels for interactions. They look for dedicated iOS and Android brand applications for better service and communication. That is why formulating a focused mobile strategy to build an omnichannel experience is crucial.
Quality of interaction
Users expect the service providers to have a team who possesses in-depth knowledge of the matter at hand and can offer friendly support. These services should be delivered in the least time possible without putting much effort.
A successful omnichannel strategy commences with a skilled team with the right knowledge and tools to offer a consistent and effortless service to your users. The above checklist ensures that you are ready to launch your omnichannel customer experience strategy, or whether your already established strategy is on the right track.
3 reasons why it’s time to migrate to an omnichannel experience
Nearly two decades ago, since the emergence of new communication channels, such as social media networks and chatbots, companies are trying to pace up with the continuous technological transformations. Brands are adopting multiple channels to be omnipresent for their customers. But with the evolution of consumer habits, the multichannel strategy started fading over time due to certain limitations – practicality from a customer’s perspective and not being able to interconnect all technology platforms.
In such a situation, merging all the channels under one platform offers the right solution, which is a successful omnichannel strategy. Eliminating the boundaries between digital and online channels enables businesses to offer a unified and continued customer experience.
Enriched customer profile
By adopting an omnichannel strategy, your brand can gain more data on each customer’s journey and how they use each touchpoint for different purposes. With this approach, you can easily identify and track all your buyers across multiple channels.
Enhanced customer’s journey
Getting a clear understanding of the purchase path of a customer allows the brand to enrich their relationship. The data empowers the insurers with a personalized approach, making it possible for customer service representatives to intervene and benefit the customers (whenever the help is required).
Openings for new opportunities
Interconnecting all the communication channels of a brand allows the business to open new development perspectives. For instance, it makes it easier for businesses to quickly adopt online appointment booking, click and collect, easy-to-use mobile app booking, and a lot more.
Once you understand the need for an omnichannel strategy for your business, it’s time you work towards building the action plan.
Here is one of the frameworks that can help you commence your multichannel to omnichannel journey.
Step 1: Unify all your touchpoints
For a smooth transition from a multichannel to an omnichannel strategy, you need to address the key issue of overcoming the differences between different touchpoints in use. The following steps can guide you:
Information standardization: The information (product prices, offers, promotions, et cetera) on all your channels should be consistent.
Service standardization: All your channels should offer identical services.
Uniform messaging: Deliver homogeneous message to heterogeneous audience.
Step 2: Easy customer transition across all touchpoints
An effortless interaction between channels ensures that the customers will be able to smoothly transition from one medium to another, expecting the same purchasing experience.
Online appointment booking: The user gets the option to book a time slot from anywhere (be it on an application or over a website).
Seamless journey: The policyholder should receive a simplified onboarding process and servicing cycle digitally.
Step 3: Centralize multichannel data
The data retrieved from disparate sources should be kept under a centralized database for easy access by all the customer service representatives. This offers a true vision of the customer.
Eliminate silos: Put an end to departmental data silos.
One platform: Aggregate all customer data under one roof and automate data collection.
Consolidate data and segment customers: Once the data is consolidated, segment your customers and prospects based on their purchasing potential.
Step 4: Adopt tools and applications required
For an omnichannel strategy to succeed, you need applications and platforms adapted to resolve certain issues.
Customer qualification for greater loyalty: Activities like customer loyalty programs, centralization of data, etc., need powerful tools and software.
Analysis automation: Once the customer data is collected, its analysis can be automated using a dedicated tool.
The framework helps you build a basic structure for your omnichannel strategy. For executing it in a full swing, you would require skilled professionals to overcome all the challenges you might face while transitioning from multichannel to omnichannel customer experience.
Looking to adopt an omnichannel experience strategy? Start with Technovert
Your business requires a laser-like focus on the value creation of an omnichannel strategy. You can achieve that with a dedicated team to draft the action plan. Technovert comes with a team of experienced designers and developers to fulfill all your requirements. Our experts can help you manage all the challenges that you will face during this transformation.
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