Multi-Channel Customer Service: It Just Makes Sense

Even amid this so-called "age of the customer," hesitance, if not outright resistance, to the multi-channel concept is unavoidable. As a result, customer management thinkers who advise brands to firmly commit to multi-channel customer service risk coming off like nagging parents rather than strategic advisors.

But, as evidenced by directives to wear seatbelts, call if one will be home late and start homework projects more than a night before the due date, some parental advice simply makes sense. Children might object to the nature of paternalism, but they cannot possibly object to the advice itself.

That is the case with multi-channel customer service. No matter how annoying speakers and writers are when it comes to trumpeting the endeavor, it is a necessary part of the customer management process.

One can prove the case for multi-channel by pointing to research reports and actual customer insights. In today’s world, customers are clearly seeking means other than the phone to reach businesses.

But argumentation for multi-channel is even more fundamental than that; in many cases, alternative service channels simplymake sense. The phone, no matter how much tradition says otherwise, is not always the channel most suitable for customer contact.

In these specific industry examples, we uncover scenarios in which alternative channels are the more logical channels. And insofar as that is true, it reveals why a singular contact notion (which would almost always default to the phone) is untenable in today’s "age of the customer." Different channels provide unique and essential value, and in order to be capable of seamlessly satisfying all customers, businesses must come to recognize "new" channels not as bonuses but as preferences.

Banking & Finance
Core Channel – Live Chat

Due to the time-sensitive nature of financial transactions, access to 24/7 live support is essential for banking customers. And due to the private nature of many banking inquiries, the option for one-on-one dialogue is similarly necessary.

While telephone support directly speaks to those needs, live chat covers one additional element of necessity for many banking customers: the ability to effectively communicate and confirm account information. Many banking inquiries require specific account and transaction information; since one typically obtains this information from his computer, it is obviously far easier to communicate that information on a computer.

Rather than scrambling to locate information and then reading it aloud, hoping that the agent not only hears the information correctly but then properly passes that information along to a transfer agent (and let’s be honest – when does that ever happen?), a live chat user can simply pull up the window, copy the information he needs, minimize it, and paste it. The information can be then be accessed, flawlessly and seamlessly, by all relevant parties.

It is also far easier for a customer to acquire and store confirmation data via a live chat console. He can also log all promises and account representative information to assist in the event something goes wrong down the road.

Since a computer is an essential device in most banking inquiries anyway, why add the extra nuisance of a phone? Why not just do everything in the more user-friendly medium?

Food Services
Core Channel – Social

Because food is a sensory experience, the best engagement with food services customers must also have a sensory component.

While tasting and smelling, the most relevant for food services, are not really attainable in a remote customer engagement environment, businesses do not have to settle for lifeless text and verbal communication. Thanks to social media, notably including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, businesses can now make sight an integral part of the customer experience.

Emphasizing image and video sharing is invaluable for building a loyal customer community. Normally limited to word-of-mouth and textual Yelp and Zagat reviews, customers will now have an opportunity to see what they are reading and put meaning behind all those words. If a restaurant is confident in its food and dêcor, it could dazzle with Instagram and YouTube.

On the other hand, not all food services experiences are ideal, and the incorporation of visuals into customer support puts weight behind customer complaints. Suddenly, customers can do more than complain about bones in a boneless chicken breast, hair on a French fry or undercooked portions of a burger—they can show everything. The brand can no longer choose to ignore the photographic evidence, and future customers will no longer be forced to do without it.

And even that potentially-damming element is not without its positives. Restaurant and food processing stakeholders can now see what is right and wrong about their products, in the process learning how to make customer-friendly changes.

Computer technology and software
Core Channel – Community Forums

Reading a manual might put a customer on the right track, but it does not guarantee immunity from future issues. Even (and sometimes, especially) the most savvy computer users run into issues with applications and software.

Help files are, unfortunately, not always helpful in such situations. They operate in accordance with standards of use and lingo to which an individual customer might not adhere. In such cases, a more interpretative walk-through is required.

Enter community forums. Staffed by employees familiar with using the applications and monitored by everyday customers, this medium provides a more relatable support experience. Customers can share screenshots, error messages or detailed accounts of their problem, and the collective of brand representatives and brand loyalists, many of whom likely encountered a similar issue, can explicitly detail the solutions.

By speaking to their actual experiences as users, rather than to the scripts and troubleshooting guides available to remote support agents, community contributors can prove infinitely more valuable than phone or chat representatives. They speak not to what the help file says but to what the inquiring customer actually needs to know.

Household goods and appliances
Core Channel – Self-service

Let’s face it – assembly is the worst. Unfortunately, our combination of frugality (who wants to pay a lofty fee for assembly) and hubris (if that 16-year-old worker can install this, so can I!) routinely puts us in positions to assemble household products and appliances. We may not have the knowledge or skill to assemble efficiently , but we’re certainly going to try!

The attitude might be upbeat, but it does not come without consequences. Since assembly rarely goes perfectly, many customers will need to turn to assistance. They can use beer and pizza to bribe friends into helping, but then they suffer the emasculation of watching a friend do something they cannot. They can call for support, but translating the dialogue from a phone call into action on a treadmill or dining room cabinet is not the easiest of endeavors.

Logically, the best option would be to access self-help files designed with action in mind. This should involve "how-to" videos and diagrams that provide customers with a more vivid representation of the assembly process, along with written instructions that speak to common mistakes and pitfalls many encounter during the assembly process.

Instead of dumping the support issue onto customer service representatives, who are likely to incorporate blame or accusation into their tone, the self-service platform enables the brand to think like its customers and speak to the very real challenges that accompany the installation process. This empowers customers to do the work and to trust the brand as one that cares.