You have determined that your customers want, and you are ready to provide,  multichannel customer support. What does your support require to be successful?

Not much. Just:

• Consistency
• Reliability
• Accessibility
• Seamlessness

All channels must be consistent with one another. Customers should receive the same information no matter what channel they are using to interact. This means that the channels must access the same knowledgebase (recommended) so only one area must be updated or that you make certain any updated information is uniformly applied to all knowledgebases or other information depots that provide information to these channels.

A multichannel initiative won't be worth much if one or more of the channels has a lot of downtime. Include a reliability requirement when shopping for the solution(s) that will make up your multichannel services. Another consideration is whether the solution(s) will scale as your  business grows and/or if some channels prove more popular than others.

Make certain to offer the channels your customers prefer to use and it will increase the chances of making a sale and keeping a customer happy, besides making it easier for more of your customers to access your customer service and customer support offerings.

Finally, the entire multichannel service must allow seamless transitions between channels, agents, and support levels. One of the biggest customer gripes is the need to repeat information whenever someone different becomes involved or when the support effort begins on one channel, resumes on another, and possibly completed on a third. No matter the channel, access to the complete customer record, including ticket or incident information, must be readily available and used by the system or agent interacting with the customer.

That's it. Not too hard, right?