Why Integrate Live Chat & Social Media

A Seamless Customer Experience

Integration is a key factor when it comes to your omnichannel experience.  Every single channel should work with one another so that your customer journey can be steered in the right direction. The channel that your customer uses should be the voice of your brand. If you have one team managing your social media pages and another handling live chat, then this won’t be providing a consistent experience. If you are able to merge them and integrate them within your company process however, then your team can provide the same level of support across all channels. This will translate to your customers getting a consistent experience, which is essential to your company's success. Omnichannel support is very beneficial to your team, as it helps to free up bandwidth while also facilitating faster response times.

Improving your Site with Self-Serve Data

One of the key aspects of an omnichannel approach would be self-service. If you have a knowledge database on your site, along with an FAQ, then this will help your customers to find the answers to their own questions. With 91% of customers saying that they would rather use a knowledge base to get their questions answered as opposed to making a phone call, it’s safe to say that this should be an essential part of your strategy. The great thing about using an omnichannel approach is that it helps you to collect more data so that you can go on to fund support centres and data collections.  Customers can then self-serve and contact you if required, which frees up your team and makes the customer experience faster and more seamless overall. If you have chat data split across social media, live chat, email and phone calls, it’s much harder for you to build self-serve databases and it’s also much harder to provide a consistent image for your brand.

Better Customer Retention

Omnichannel resources, if you align them with your marketing campaign can also help you to get more sales. Everything will run through the same platform, whether it’s your Facebook chat, WhatsApp messages or even emails. This translates to every message being as valuable as the next, so your team won’t feel the need to focus on one platform over another. This will help you to secure more conversions which translates to more sales.

Cross and Upsell

Cross-channel engagement is essential if you work in e-commerce. 71% of customers view their in-store experience as being as essential as their digital experience. Customers will normally use their phone or mobile device to research the product they want, and then pick it up at a store afterwards. If you use an omnichannel approach, then you will be able to integrate your online experience and your offline experience. You can use in-app functionality to understand the intent of your customer, before nudging them gently to a product they may like as an upsell. You can then send them an SMS with a discount code or a message regarding their cart abandonment. This is a much more efficient process when compared to waiting for a response from your third drip email.

Catering to a Bigger Audience

If you limit yourself to certain platforms or channels, then you will be losing out on your chance to actively engage with your potential customers. It may be that you are so busy monitoring the live chat on your website that you do not end up engaging with your audience on social media. Either way, if you don’t do this then you may find that your cart abandonments spiral out of control and that you are simply not able to convert as much as you could be. Studies have shown that over 72% of millennials are more likely to choose a company that responds on social media. With social media quickly becoming the way to raise concerns, it’s safe to say that you should be using it to your advantage. If you’re able to offer an omnichannel experience, then this will help your customers to gain more options that go far beyond email or live chat.

Brand Accountability

Having an omnichannel level of support can be a double-edged sword. You may find that you are able to pick up on bad customer experiences more because everything is running through a single system. That being said, it also gives you the chance to learn what your company is doing right. With omnichannel support, you will be able to connect your customer with a single representative from your brand, whether they are coming through Facebook, live chat or even email. This will help you to gain trust and it will also make your brand appear way more consistent. If you believe that your brand is able to provide a good level of customer service, but some users are falling through the net because of poor communication, then an omnichannel system could help you with that. You may be able to stop certain customers from falling to the wayside and you may even find that you can manage your entire customer experience from a single dashboard. If you do this consistently, it could help you to solidify your brand and it will also make your customers feel way more valued.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the first impression that your customer gets from your brand will usually come down to the support you have provided them with. Customer service is now more dynamic than ever before, with the trends from yesterday being essential for today. Omnichannel support is certainly one of them, so if your company is yet to combine your chat and social media support, now is the time for you to make a positive change.

Ready to get started? You can contact us for a demo or you can sign up for a free trial. You can also give us a call at 0845 123 5871 to find out more.