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The customer sees an advertisement for your product and asks a question via WhatsApp; then gets an OTP on SMS, order confirmation via email, and contacts customer support over phone.
To the business, these may look like five different channels.
To the customer, they're all conversations with one brand.
It is in this very area where most enterprise communication plans fail. Businesses just keep on adding more channels without creating contextual continuity between them. Customers repeat themselves. Support agents jump between systems. The marketing team sees half the journey while the customer service team sees the other half.
Omnichannel communication plan fixes a different issue than ubiquity.
This distinction matters.
While the multichannel business would provide SMS, WhatsApp, email, voice, and RCS communication services, if all channels are operated independently, customer experience will remain fragmented.
What is omnichannel then?
By bringing in the unified messaging, there is coordination of customer communication through channels and not through independent silos.
Imagine a situation where a customer has initiated communication on WhatsApp and then made a call to customer service. With the independent channels system, the customer support representative knows nothing about the previous communication.
In an omnichannel environment, it is possible to move some relevant context along the way.
Also check: Top Benefits of Using a Unified Communication Platform
This is the difference between multichannel and multichannel collaboration.
People don't have one permanent “preferred channel.”
Preferences are situational in nature.
A customer may prefer an SMS to receive an OTP, WhatsApp to discuss support, email to send a detailed document, voice to resolve an urgent situation and RCS to have an interactive experience of the product.
Enterprises therefore shouldn't ask:
“Which channel should we use?”
A better question is:
“Which channel makes sense for this customer, right now?”
The omnichannel approach will provide business flexibility to respond to that question.
It is not much worse than having to repeat oneself.
How about explaining the transaction failure to a chatbot and getting transferred to a human representative who will have you repeat the whole process all over again?
The technology changed. The customer's problem remained.
The unified messaging solution will be able to present relevant information about past conversations and context about the customer for more connected support experience.
It will make it more efficient and, most importantly, much more natural.
It is not just about being consistent.
It is about continuity.
Notifications were one-sided in the traditional enterprise communication process:
Your order has shipped.
Your payment is due.
Your application has been received.
Useful? Yes.
Conversational? Definitely not.
The feature Two-way Messaging for Business turns this process into a conversation since it enables users to take some action and reply through the messaging processes supported.
Besides providing information related to the shipment, users can request help or clarification. Rather than getting asked about an appointment, users get an opportunity to confirm or cancel it.
Notifications turn out to be an additional level of interaction, and not just a reminder.
For enterprises working with a large number of customers, it may become especially beneficial.
SMS is still very useful for reach and instant messaging but not all customer engagements can be limited to plain text.
This is where Rich Communication Services (RCS) could provide an additional layer.
RCS is the future of messaging services which offers file sharing, typing indicators and interactivity. As far as enterprise messaging goes, it makes it possible to connect with our customers in a more interactive manner on the native messaging channels.
Through rich cards, media and interactivity, we can make the customer journeys simpler without adding extra steps.
The key aspect is not in replacement of SMS, WhatsApp and emails.
The important thing is to have another channel that you can use smartly when necessary.
Connecting channels solves one part of the problem.
Knowing how to use these channels is another part.
An AI-driven customer communication platform could take advantage of the information it has regarding its customers to make better decisions about communicating with them.
That might mean determining:
AI can also be used for conversational experience, personalization, and intelligent routing.
The result should not be more automation for its own sake.
It should be less unnecessary communication and more useful communication.
Disconnected channels don't only frustrate customers. They create problems internally too.
Marketing may know which campaign a customer responded to. Sales may know what they asked about. Support may know why they complained.
But does anyone see the whole journey?
Having a connected communication ecosystem makes conversation data more valuable for different teams.
This way, enterprises can know where their customers interact, where the conversations fail, and which journeys end up in the right results.
Rather than focusing on optimising SMS, WhatsApp, or emails separately, teams will start to optimize the customer journey.
The construction and management of individual infrastructures for each communication channel can soon turn into a complex affair.
A CPaaS platform in India could help enterprises incorporate communication functionalities using APIs and a unified technology layer instead of having each channel built separately.
The key benefit of this approach to the expanding enterprises is that new communication pathways can be added without constantly building yet another isolated system.
There is also space left for automation, analytics and orchestration across channels.
To put it differently, CPaaS enables enterprises to transition from:
“We support five channels.”
to:
“We manage one connected customer journey across five channels.”
That's a much more useful definition of scale.
This is perhaps the biggest misconception.
Omnichannel marketing does not include using the same promotional message on SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, and email.
This is not an example of omnichannel marketing.
This is an example of repetition.
Good orchestration understands the role of each channel.
An OTP might go through SMS. A rich product discovery experience might use RCS. A conversational query could continue on WhatsApp. A detailed statement might arrive by email. A sensitive issue may move to voice.
The customer shouldn't feel the complexity behind those decisions.
There should not be any effort on their part in feeling that the interaction with the company is hassle-free.
With Pingverse, SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, Email and Voice become parts of a single communication environment, aiding enterprises in delivering connected customer experiences rather than isolated channel management.
As a CPaaS platform for India, Pingverse provides companies an opportunity to integrate APIs, automation, unified messaging, two-way messaging and customer engagement powered by AI through different points of contact.
It’s very simple:
Right message. Right channel. Right moment. One connected journey.
Be it a move from SMS to WhatsApp, RCS to voice or even email to other channels, the experience should remain seamless for the customers.
Customers don't think in channels.
They think in terms of what they are trying to accomplish.
It is for this reason that the future of enterprise communication does not lie in the creation of more channels but in the seamless integration of the existing channels.
Having an effective omnichannel communication approach can help to mitigate fragmentation, sustain the context, personalize and improve the ability to control the customer journey.
The effectiveness of the omnichannel communication strategy can play an important role in mitigating fragmentation, maintaining the context, personalizing, and controlling the customer journey.
Only then communication will no longer be about the messages.
It will be about a single conversation.
Learn More About Pingverse
Omnichannel communication connects customer communication across different channels including SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, email and voice. The idea behind it is to provide better customer experience when transitioning between different channels.
Multichannel communication is the practice of using multiple communication channels. Omnichannel communication connects multichannel communication to build a seamless customer experience journey across channels.
Unified messaging is crucial because it is able to reduce communication silos through creating a unified environment where customer interactions will be linked to create better context.
AI-driven customer communication platform will help companies to use personalization, conversational automation, intelligent routing, and decision-making on how to communicate with customers.
Pingverse enables businesses to connect SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, email and voice communication channels into a unified communication ecosystem in order to create automated two-way customer communication journeys.