The omnichannel experience explained

Being omnichannel-ready is no longer exceptional for today’s companies. It’s a necessity for any business to be able to view and learn from their customer’s whole journey. from A to Z, across channels. In each step, companies learn critical information about their customer’s preferences, their customer’s intentions, and how each channel is performing. 

So what does a truly omnichannel experience look like and how can you craft one yourself? We’ll unpack that and more. But, first let’s dive into what an omnichannel experience looks like from a customer standpoint. 

It’s easy to miss the number of channels that we use in an everyday purchase. Let’s say you’re scrolling through Instagram and an ad for a coffee table catches your eye. You might click through that ad, order the table on your laptop, and keep track of your order via text. When it arrives, you could leave a review on that manufacturer’s site or call them about how to keep your new coffee table in great shape. In the blink of an eye, you’ve used five or six channels for what feels like one interaction. 

To digital-first companies, that type of experience should be one interaction. But, for companies using legacy software, tracing a customer journey across channels can be difficult. Legacy customer service software typically gives you access to one slice of your customers’ journey whether that’s an IVR, web-based, or self-serve experience. Airkit is built to break through those silos and unite formerly separate pools of data, so you can have a more comprehensive view of your customer. 

The average customer wants your company to adapt to them. They don’t want to change their behavior, or go against their own preferences. Omnichannel experiences allow your customer to contact or work with your business across SMS, email, self-serve flows, and web experiences. That gives your customer more choice and more of an opportunity to find the path that suits their preferences. 

The power of personalization is incredibly clear in the retail industry in particular. Over 40% of U.S. consumers reported that they had bought something a little pricier than what they initially had their sights set on because of their shopping experience being personalized. 

Airkit’s digital CX platform connects the various channels your customers use so you can glean their preferences across channels and deliver on those preferences. One Airkit customer revamped their customer experience across their call center, SMS based updates, and website, and discovered data that helped them serve their customers at a higher level. 

AutoReturn Uses Airkit to Unlock Customer Satisfaction, Omnichannel Capability

AutoReturn helps reunite customers with their cars after they’ve been towed. Obviously, this is a time sensitive task that involves multiple parties from the customer, to the towing company, to the government entity or private party that initiated the tow. 

Using Airkit, they streamlined communication across their IVR, website, and mobile experience, getting their customers back to their cars faster than before. Instead of having customers wait on hold to speak to an agent when calling to gather information on their car, AutoReturn routed those callers via SMS to a self-serve experience so the customer could access that information with a few taps or clicks. 

While this self-serve experience dramatically sped up customers’ time to resolution, it also unlocked critical data that AutoReturn hadn’t seen before — their customers preferred a mobile experience. 

 “Airkit’s data has been wonderful. One of our biggest insights was seeing that 85% of callers contact AutoReturn via mobile device.That makes us more confident in our SMS and mobile-based services and features,” said John Pendelton, CTO of AutoReturn. 

Unlocking the Power of Omnichannel 

The promise of omnichannel is closer than you think. Using digital CX platforms like Airkit, you can unite formerly siloed databases, and formerly disconnected channels together to see where you can better serve your customers. We’d be happy to help you do just that. If you’d like to learn more about Airkit, contact us here!