What Is Omnichannel Messaging & How Does It Work?

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Omnichannel messaging is a communication approach wherein brands enable customers to start a conversation on one channel and seamlessly continue the same conversation on another channel. An omnichannel strategy helps brands to engage customers with personalized messaging and offer a consistent and cohesive customer experience (CX).

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An Illustration of Omnichannel Messaging

Let’s say a user, Julian, clicks on a Facebook ad of the latest headphones on sale. He lands on the product page and adds to cart his chosen headphone. For some reason, he abandons the purchase and drops off. An SMS or a WhatsApp notification is triggered by the chatbot to remind him of the item on his cart. He replies and requests more product details. The chatbot helps Julian with the information he needs to complete the purchase. Two days later, Julian receives a message with a catalog of a storage bag and headphone case as upselling and cross-selling options, which help brands drive more purchases, increase average order value (AOV) and boost customer satisfaction (CSAT). Thus, omnichannel messaging offers a seamless customer experience (CX) across channels and boosts sales and revenue.

What are the Key Benefits of Omnichannel Messaging?

Omnichannel messaging helps brands derive a wide range of benefits. Let’s look at five of the most prominent.

 

Reach New Customers

Brands can amplify their visibility and win new customers by reaching prospects on prominent channels like WhatsApp, a channel which 57% of customers use to communicate with brands. Reaching new customers drives brand growth too.

 

Improved Customer Engagement

By delivering the right message at the right time, and on the right channel, brands can improve customer engagement. A study in 2019 revealed that omnichannel campaigns received an engagement rate of 18.96% while single-channel campaigns received just 5.4% engagement rate.

 

Better Efficiency

An omnichannel strategy allows brands to collect customer data just once, rather than at every customer interaction or touchpoint, which helps improve operational efficiency. A Harvard Business Review study found that companies with omnichannel customer engagement strategies achieve a 9.5% increase in Y-o-Y revenue.

 

Personalization

As brands collect customer data across channels, they gather a comprehensive understanding of customer preferences, needs and pain points, and are able to tailor their messaging accordingly to drive better engagement and achieve better business outcomes.

 

Better Customer Experience

Because customers engage with brands on their preferred channels, each interaction or touchpoint becomes friction-less and leads to a better customer experience, which further translates to increased brand loyalty and retention. Brands with strong omnichannel customer engagement strategies achieve an average Y-o-Ycustomer retention rate of 91%, a study reveals.

Why is Omnichannel Messaging Important for Businesses?
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Build Better Customer Relationships

Brands can leverage omnichannel communication to influence consumers’ decision-making at each step of the buying journey. Consistent and engaging conversations with customers help build deeper customer relationships and reinforce brand recall.

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Increased Sales

Omnichannel messaging ties together several aspects of closing a sale by reaching customers where they are, offering personalization, enhancing the buying experience, and improving customer satisfaction. This manifests in increased sales, more repeat purchases and improved customer retention.

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Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Diversity is the new reality of commerce in which customers expect brands to reach them with attractive deals and incentives - on their preferred messaging channels. Omnichannel messaging improves the customer experience, which increases spending & customer lifetime value.

How to Maximize the Potential of Omnichannel Messaging

Let’s look at the three aspects of nailing your brand’s omnichannel messaging strategy and achieving your targets.

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Prioritize Channels

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  • circle-checkIt’s not necessary to be everywhere at the same time.
  • circle-checkIdentify the channels that your target audiences frequency use and consistently engage with them to drive brand awareness and improve your customer acquisition efforts.
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Personalize Messaging

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  • circle-checkEngage your customers with customized messages and offers that cater to individual’s needs and preferences.
  • circle-checkThis could mean personalized product recommendations, curated offers or product information to offer a great CX and trigger purchasing interest.
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Be Customer-Centric

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  • circle-checkOffer a seamless and integrated experience that enables customers to move from one channel to another without interruption.
  • circle-checkPut customers front and center of all communications, so they become a loyal ambassador of your brand.

How Haptik Can Help Implement Omnichannel Messaging for Your Brand

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Haptik’s intuitive chatbots streamline customer experience while helping your brand maintain a consistent voice across marketing, sales and other key departments. They help you engage in conversations that are authentic, personalized and contextual from one interaction to the next. omnichannel-selling-haptik-mar-23

Engagement Optimization down arrow

For omnichannel messaging to work, it’s vital that you optimize user engagement, which you can achieve with Haptik’s customizable UI. Haptik gives you access to more than 100 UI elements that include quick replies, multi-option forms, image carousels, emojis, and more. Rich_Interactive_Experiences

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Haptik’s omnichannel solution gives you real-time insights into conversational data and offers a deeper understanding of customer behavior. You can use this data to optimize product offerings, identify gaps and find new ways to boost conversions and revenue. chatbot_analytics
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Meet Customers on their Favorite Messaging Channels

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WhatsApp

Reach new customers and offer an end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp.

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Instagram

Tap into the visual nature of Instagram to showcase products and drive sales.

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Facebook

Communicate directly with customers and drive personalized engagement to boost conversions.

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SMS

Lead two-way conversations via SMS and maximize the potential to generate leads, complete transactions and drive repeat purchases.

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Web

Convert web visitors into leads and customers using a web chatbot to engage in right conversations at the right time.

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Google Business Messages

Engage potential buyers in conversations when they search for your brand on Google Search, Google Maps or on websites, and boost your chances of conversion.

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How Haptik’s Partners are Leveraging Omnichannel Messaging

Haptik has helped global brands boost sales, revenue and customer loyalty with industry-leading omnichannel solutions.

Jiomart case study

Jiomart case study

JioMart, an online shopping platform developed by Reliance Industries, has a wide range of product offerings from consumer electronics to apparel to grocery and general merchandise. It recognized the need for an omnichannel approach to make shopping seamless for crores of Indian citizens. Haptik built a chatbot that would go on to facilitate the first end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp, receiving acclaim from Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Haptik’s solution for JioMart made it seamless for customers to discover products, add to cart, confirm delivery information, and complete purchase using any payment method - doing so from within WhatsApp.

Haptik’s solution helped JioMart achieve a 15% conversion rate and a repeat rate of 68%.

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Netmeds, one of India’s most trusted and convenient pharmacies, Netmeds, sought a solution that could handle its 10x surge in customer growth

Netmeds partnered with Haptik to build a chatbot capable of delivering a consistent experience while helping foster long-lasting customer relationships. Named Netty, the chatbot could respond to queries via Google Search and Google Maps using Google Business Messages (GBM) and Haptik.

Haptik’s solution made it seamless for Netmeds to handle the surge in demand while enabling its customers to track and manage their orders intuitively by chatting directly with the chatbot.

Haptik’s solution helped Netmeds save 2600+ agent hours, achieve an automation rate of 83.6% and improve its first-response time by 99%.

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TravelXP, a global travel media-tech brand, TravelXP sought to offer a seamless way for its customers to manage their travel bookings via Instagram.

It partnered with Haptik to build an Instagram bot to aid its lead-generation efforts via the image-sharing platform. The visual content on Instagram makes it the ideal channel for TravelXP to promote attractive hotel and flight deals to some of the world’s dream destinations.

Haptik built an Instagram bot to help TravelXP generate leads and convert more of those leads into sales and revenue.

Since implementation, the bot has handled 75% of customer queries, which has reduced the load on the call center and freed the agents to focus on handling more complex queries.

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Aegon Life, a digital life insurance company in India, Aegon Life offers a diverse range of life insurance policy plans. It sought an omnichannel chatbot capable of helping customers with end-to-end query resolution and offer a positive customer experience.

Aegon Life partnered with Haptik to build a chatbot solution that could handle customer queries pertaining to policy, policy premium, premium due dates, and premium certificates.

Haptik built a chatbot solution catering to web, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which helped Aegon Life reduce agent hours by 200 hours.

Conclusion

Omnichannel messaging is a necessity for eCommerce and retail brands to drive brand growth as it helps influence the purchase decision at each stage of the customer journey. Moreover, it enhances the customer experience and helps brands derive insights into their customers’ buying behavior. However, to maximize the potential of omnichannel messaging, brands must zero in on their priority channels, make their communication with customers personalized, leverage data to ascertain what’s working and what’s not, and consistently optimize their strategy to achieve the desired business outcomes.