Does your business development team only make phone calls? Do they just send emails? Do they only go door-to-door? They likely do all of the above and more. Effective business development executives use every channel at their disposal to engage potential customers and demonstrate the value their company has to offer.
Now apply that same principle to your customer’s ability to engage with you. In this fast-paced digital world, customers expect immediate and accurate responses to their business inquiries. Omnichannel call center technology can improve the quality of customer support for your business by empowering your customers to contact you the way they want to. This is especially important for your younger customers who skew heavily in favor of mobile, SMS, and social media platforms as their preferred method of engagement.
Offering a seamless omnichannel experience to customers and prospects is essential for all companies, regardless of size. Omnichannel is a value-add for small and large businesses alike. Quickly consider a few trends:
Mobile devices now drive 56 percent of traffic to top sites.
This means more than half of the people who are looking at your site have already indicated that their preferred method of engagement is mobile. If you are not giving them a mobile option to connect with one of your business development reps, submit an issue to your customer service department or make a payment, you’re severely limiting your ability to convert viewers into customers.
Businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies achieve 91 percent greater year-over-year customer retention rates compared to businesses that don’t.
An omnichannel strategy doesn’t just attract more customers, it positions your business to more efficiently service existing customers and maintain higher levels of customer engagement and satisfaction.
55 percent of companies have no cross-channel strategy in place.
For every company that does not offer their customers an omnichannel engagement strategy, there is another with an active strategy in place that is already benefiting from this competitive advantage. As more and more companies adopt this technology, companies that are not utilizing this strategy to attract and maintain customers will continue to fall behind.
These trends show that omnichannel technology is quickly becoming the industry standard for all businesses – mainly due to demographic shifts and the disruption of the tech industry. We see these shifts manifest themselves in everything, from devices themselves to apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Businesses without an omnichannel strategy will lose customers to their competitors. So, to take this conversation full circle, is an omnichannel contact center right for your small business? Absolutely.