Don’t Shy Away from Adopting an Omnichannel Strategy for your Startup!

“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff you aren’t moving fast enough.” ~ Mark Zuckerburg, Co-founder & CEO, Meta Platforms Inc.

For more than a decade, most Startup founders and employees have drawn inspiration from Mark Zuckerburg’s famous motto for Facebook in its early days - ‘Move fast and break things’. While the jury is still out to determine whether this outlook is plausible or not, we can tell you right here, right now, that if you end up moving too fast and breaking your customers’ trust and relationship, that will be the end of the line for your business.

Fret not. To ensure your business sees long-term success beyond the initial spurt of growth, we must first determine which phase of growth are you at currently. To do so, let’s understand the basic difference between Startups and Scaleups.

I know what’s a Startup, but what’s a Scaleup?

A Startup is an organisation that is in the initial stages of business, often characterised by a small number of employees and limited revenue. The main focus of a Startup is typically on developing and launching a new product or service, as well as building a customer base.

A Scaleup, on the other hand, is a company that has demonstrated traction in the market and is now focused on growing and expanding its operations. This often includes increasing revenue, hiring more employees, and expanding into new markets. Scaleups are typically further along in the business lifecycle than Startups and have a proven business model.

6 Omnichannel Customer Experience Tips for Growing Startups

By providing a consistent and positive experience across all channels, Startups can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can lead to increased brand advocacy and repeat business. Additionally, an omnichannel approach can also help Startups to better understand and engage with their customers by gathering data and insights from unified channels. This can help Startups to identify opportunities for growth and innovation.

In a highly competitive landscape, creating a positive customer experience can be the key differentiator and help Startups to stand out and grow.
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1. Understand Your Customers

Conduct research to understand their needs, preferences, and behaviour to tailor your omnichannel strategy accordingly.  

Leveraging customer interaction history to deliver personalised experiences is the key to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. By understanding how customers interact with your business, you can tailor their experience to their individual needs. This includes understanding what customers want and expect, as well as what they respond well to.

Customer interaction history can be used to deliver personalised content, product recommendations, and targeted marketing communications. This helps create a more relevant and engaging experience for customers, which can lead to increased satisfaction and loyalty.

A unified CX solution can help you make sense of customer data to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.

2. Consistency Across Channels

Maintain a consistent brand image, tone, and messaging across all channels to create a seamless experience for customers.

Your customers should feel like they are receiving the same level of service and attention no matter which channels they choose to engage with your business. Whether they are speaking to a customer support representative, browsing your website, reading your marketing materials on out-of-home media, or interacting with an AI-powered Chatbot on your website, your business should always come across as friendly, helpful, and trustworthy.  

As a growing business you should aim to provide a more connected, cohesive experience to your customers by bringing all the communication channels under one roof.

3. Personalised Experiences‍

Use customer interaction data to deliver personalised experiences and offer relevant and targeted content and promotions. By understanding how your customers interact with your business, you can better tailor your marketing efforts to their individual needs and preferences.

Creating personalised experiences for customers can greatly benefit a growing Startup in several ways:

• Increased Customer Loyalty: Personalised experiences make customers feel valued and appreciated, which can lead to increased loyalty and repeat business.
• Improved Customer Satisfaction: By delivering personalised experiences a growing Startup can cater to the specific needs and preferences of customers more efficiently, which leads to higher levels of satisfaction and positive feedback.
• Increased Average Order Value: Personalised content and communication keeps a customer interested in the brand, and can lead to increased engagement and conversions, resulting in higher sales and revenue for the Startup. 80% customers are more likely to buy from a business that offers personalised services.
• Better Data-driven Decision Making: Delivering personalised experiences allows a Startup to gather data on what customers are looking for, how they feel about a particular product, what improvements they would like to see in the products or services, etc. This in turn can be used to improve products and services to better meet those needs. It can also help a business assess and improve the quality of interaction between their staff and customers.
• Stand out from the competitors: Replicating a personalised service is next to impossible for a competitor as it would be tailored to a customer’s situation and need. This automatically makes you as a business standout in the crowd and create a unique identity in the market.

4. Communicate Proactively

Startups can use data on customer demographics and psychographics to identify different customer segments and anticipate their needs. An integrated solution can empower a growing business to have a unified perspective of customers’ purchase history, browsing habits, and engagement levels, to anticipate what they might need or want in the future.  

Startups can create a real-time support system that can anticipate customer needs and provide immediate assistance. For example, chatbots can be deployed to understand customer enquiries and provide real-time, relevant support, leaving your staff to focus on business’s core competencies.

5. Mobile Optimisation

Make sure your website and apps are optimized for mobile devices to provide a seamless experience for customers on-the-go.

Businesses can ensure their website is optimised for mobile devices by using responsive design, which allows the website to automatically adjust its layout to fit the screen size of the device being used.

#ProTip Keeping the number of clicks to a minimum, using larger text, and making sure the site loads quickly are a few other key elements to keep in mind.  

6. Train Employees On-the-go

Provide your employees with the necessary training and tools to deliver an exceptional omnichannel customer experience. It can be overwhelming for a Startup’s customer support team to hold the fort and label all the customer interaction data at the same time.  

Make sure you are using a CX solution that enables the team managers to monitor conversions between employees and customers and jump-in if necessary to manage a situation. This not only helps in training the staff in real-time, but also ensure your customers do not have a negative experience while interacting with the business.  

All the collated interaction data can then be used to develop training modules for staff and flesh out a list of canned response for frequently repeated questions. Thus, improve overall efficiency of the process.

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A unified CX solution like CINNOX can help your business to gather key data and actionable insights from a unified database, giving you a more comprehensive view of your customers. It can also help in streamlining your operations, reduce costs and increase efficiency by integrating systems and processes across all channels, including in-store, online, and mobile.