What is Omnichannel Customer Service?

Omnichannel customer service refers to a consumer's ability to get assistance from a business in multiple channels (e.g., phone, chat, and mobile app), receive a consistent experience in each channel, and be able to seamlessly move across channels during their customer journey. With the proliferation of digital services, it's not unusual for today's consumers to use multiple support channels, often within the same transaction. For example, a customer with an issue might seek help in an online chat session and midway through decide he wants to talk with an agent over the phone.

In the past, this scenario would have meant starting from scratch with the phone agent, who wouldn't have access to the chat transcript. The customer would have to repeat everything they had just told the chat agent, making for a bad customer experience. Omnichannel customer service solves this problem. In an omnichannel customer service scenario, the phone agent will have access to the chat transcript and might even be the same person the customer was chatting with.

NICE research shows that 91% of consumers expect businesses to deliver omnichannel customer service; however, only 24% of organizations rate themselves "excellent" at delivering it. This reflects the difficulty and complexity of providing true omnichannel customer service. It requires revamping processes and systems company-wide. Within contact centers it means, for example, having an automatic call distributor (ACD) capable of intelligently routing interactions regardless of channel, arming multi-skilled agents with an interface that supports true omnichannel, and workforce management solutions that can forecast and staff for multiple channels.

Investing in omnichannel customer service capabilities is becoming imperative in order to meet customer expectations. Businesses that make this a priority will be well-prepared to compete in the experience economy.