One of the strategies most talked about today is omnichannel. Companies are increasingly promoting the use of channels that allow them to facilitate customer service. But is omnichannel an efficient response to people’s customer service needs? Does simply adding more channels for customer-company interactions suffice? Although this is an ongoing process and debate, a consensus has been reached on certain things. For most people, customer service continues to be associated with a desk where a person is waiting to help with what they need. What helps reduce the effort involved and yields a good experience? Being able to resolve what they came for during that first contact at the customer service desk. There is still a widespread belief that a visit to customer service involves long lines, getting sent from one area to another, several hours, and great effort to resolve an issue.

In this regard, an omni-channel strategy in and of itself does not address this. If a company offers multiple channels for customer contact, but a customer gets passed from one to another without being able to resolve an issue, the feeling and experience are both negative, no matter how digital or innovative the new channel may be. And, if the customer ends up visiting an office, branch or store to resolve the issue in person after attempting to do so on three or four digital channels, the negative impact can be even more severe. The question, then, is not merely about offering multiple channels for customer service but about finding the most appropriate channels for your customers. It is also about generating a customer service experience in which questions, transactions and inconveniences can be addressed in whichever channel the customer chooses. The challenge of efficiently managing channels and informing customers what can be done in each channel is a task companies must address head on. If the customer has to guess which channel does what—or has to resort to more than one channel to resolve an issue—he or she ends up feeling like the whole thing has involved too much effort, generating distrust and irritation with digital service models