Multichannel customer contact how and what?

Being reachable on relevant channels? Multichannel/ominchannel/cross-channel ... what is all that and why is it important? Read about it here!

What is it?

Multichannel customer service is an approach to customer service that uses different channels to help customers, such as email, phone, chat, social media and self-service. This makes it easier for customers to communicate in the way that appeals most to them, and it allows companies to reach a wider audience. Multichannel customer service also improves customer service effectiveness by centralizing and analyzing information about customer interactions, enabling companies to better understand and respond to customer needs.

What channels are there?

Most customer service organizations provide support through the following channels:

Phone: A traditional customer service channel, where customers can talk to a live agent to get help.
E-mail: Customers can send an e-mail with their question or request and usually receive a response within a certain time.
Chat: Customers can have real-time conversations with a live agent via chat.
Self-service: Customers can go to a self-service portal or knowledge base for answers to frequently asked questions.
Social media: Companies offer support through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

It is important to note that some organizations also offer support through other channels, such as mail, fax, and video chat. It depends on the specific needs of the company and the customer.

What are the channel preferences?

It depends on the preference of the individual client and the nature of the problem or question they need help with. In general, clients may have the following preferences:

Calling: Some customers prefer to talk directly to someone and need quick help with technical or urgent problems.
Chat: Other customers find it easier to quickly ask a question via chat and get a quick answer without having to wait in a phone queue.
Emailing: Some customers are more comfortable taking the time to explain their question or problem via e-mail and are not in a hurry to get an answer.

It is important to remember that customers often want to use multiple channels and companies should therefore offer multiple channels of communication for customer service. This helps customers choose the best option that fits their specific need and improves their overall experience with the company.

About SpangenbergGroup

We can help you make sure your customer service is good customer service. Just good customer service where the basics are in order. Where customer contacts add value to the customer experience. We relieve you in the area we are good at (customer service) so you can concentrate worry-free on what you do best. Sound good? Get in touch. You can use this form ->

What our customers say about our services

 5/5

As a start-up, we were looking for a scalable solution for our international customer service. We then started a partnership with SpangenbergGroep. In the years that followed, we grew rapidly and SpangenbergGroep ensured that our customer service grew nicely along with us. From a few hundred interactions per month to a few hundred interactions per day across all possible channels. In particular, its flexibility and ability to completely unburden us have enabled us to grow from start-up to multinational.

"Our collaboration has now been running for almost 2 years and I must say it has exceeded my expectations. It is always difficult to convey product content knowledge remotely and this has also forced us to look at our own documentation and training courses. Working together has taught us, at least me, that it is unnecessary and actually undesirable to transfer all knowledge in this way. For instance, we now have comprehensive lists and work instructions, where before we built on the individual knowledge of our own team. Why go it alone when we know more together? In other words, why do it the hard way when it can be done together."

In our peak season, we had to deal with a large increase in customer inquiries. Since we operate in almost all European countries, this was a challenge. We started looking for a partner who could support us in Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, French and English. In addition, we wanted support on telephony, e-mail, chat and ticketing. In the end, we chose SpangenbergGroep. We have now been working with them for 5 years. In the high season we need a lot of staff and in the low season a lot less.

We have our own internal call center where we handle much of our customer service inquiries ourselves. SpangenbergGroup is a flexible shell for us. We have a permanent staff and SpangenbergGroup's team supports us when it's busy. In this way, we avoid a queue for our customers. The employees of SpangenbergGroep carry out almost all tasks, which means that they fully participate as the first line. This gives us the flexibility to be easily accessible even when we are busy.

With our webshop, we wanted to expand into Germany. We ourselves did not have any German-speaking employees who could answer customer service questions. SpangenbergGroup is now helping us with German customer service so that we can simply provide good accessibility for our German customers as well.