The modern day fashion and beauty consumer has higher expectations than ever before. In this age of instant gratification, delivering a positive customer experience could be the difference between a lifelong customer and one lost to the competition.
Building meaningful relationships with customers is the key to success for leading fashion and beauty brands. They focus on making customers a part of the brand experience and even give them ownership of the brand itself. When brands treat customers like transactions, they end up putting those hard-earned relationships in jeopardy.
In a customer’s time of need, your brand must be able to deliver. It’s not enough that your brand remains accessible on a customer’s chosen channel — that conversation also has to seamlessly transfer to other channels when required. But the concept of omnichannel customer support has been watered down.
Multichannel doesn’t mean omnichannel
Being available on multiple channels doesn’t mean that you are providing true omnichannel support. Brands must ensure seamless transitions and consistent experiences from one channel to the next.
In a multichannel support environment, each channel lives in its own silo with its own dedicated team of agents. When a customer contacts a company, the team manning that channel will create a ticket. However, if the customer then contacts the company through a different channel about the same issue, a second ticket will be created — and agent collision will occur.
Ad position: web_incontent_pos1
In this scenario, a customer ends up feeling more like a ticket than an actual human being. By comparison, omnichannel support shifts the conversation from ticket resolution to customer relationship building. Customers have the freedom to move between channels throughout their engagement, with guaranteed consistency, so each conversation starts where the last one ended.
Building loyalty
Omnichannel support provides easier and more effortless interactions, resulting in positive and helpful outcomes. For any fashion or beauty brand, it’s imperative to build positive brand sentiment with customers to encourage loyalty and repeat purchases.
And as customer interactions become more frequent, the chances of triggering a cycle of positive interactions — which lead to additional sales — increases. In fact, after having a positive experience with a company, 77 percent of customers would recommend the company to a friend.
Ad position: web_incontent_pos2
Increasing efficiency
Employees handling support requests aren’t the only ones frustrated by agent friction. In traditional support systems, if a customer cannot follow through with a support conversation on one channel, they will likely open an entirely new ticket with a new support agent, focusing on the exact same issue.
This can frustrate the customer in a multitude of ways; not only will they have to repeat information, they may get different resolutions from different agents, as well as different timelines depending on who they interact with. In short: it’s difficult to build brand trust when you receive mixed messages from siloed channels.
In an omnichannel support strategy, agent collision never occurs. Communication channels are integrated, so agents can view the conversation and maintain context even as they engage through multiple channels. A single answer to the issue or question at hand is all but certain, and the consistency of the experience keeps customers from becoming frustrated and switching brands in the future. Additionally, work is never duplicative — meaning more efficient agents and happier customers.
Delivering omnichannel support
Modern day fashion and beauty brands can’t rest on their laurels. It’s no longer enough to expect their legacy brand story to both fuel and maintain customer loyalty. Brands must focus on building meaningful, long term relationships with their customers. This is achieved by fostering an open dialogue: no matter the channel, no matter the time. True omnichannel support is possible for fashion and beauty brands. It requires:
- Being available on any channel the customer wants to use
- A customer-centric not ticket-centric approach to support
- Enabling customers and agents to freely move across channels within a single conversation
- Placing each customer in touch with the most appropriate resource as quickly as possible to ensure consistency and quality
- Agents to have a real-time view into the conversations that occur on all the available channels, so they have the context of the issue, without needing the customer to repeat any information
An omnichannel strategy backed by a true omnichannel solution will quickly facilitate the customer service that drives loyalty and keeps your customer base and brand growing.
Download Kustomer’s Omnichannel Guide to learn how you can deliver truly omnichannel support to your customers.
