Call Center Management Featured Article
Laying the Foundation of a Truly Omnichannel Customer Support Experience
The contact center is one of the busiest places in any company – whether it’s in-house or outsourced – and one of the most stressful. While things seldom change in accounting, it’s a different story in the contact center. Customer expectations are always changing, as is technology. This means that customer support functions must be ready, willing and able to meet customers where they expect to be serviced. Those expectations are in a flux today.
Years ago, contact centers boasted that they were “multichannel.” This is a largely meaningless phrase today: of course you let your customers contact you by channels other than telephone. Today, it’s about “omnichannel” customer support: a technology platform that brings all channels and all contact center intelligence together to make best use of the information and service customers in every way they expect, even if that means they change channels in mid-transaction. It’s a rare find in companies today, despite lots of talk, according to Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo in a recent blog post.
“It’s not just offering different customer contact channels besides the telephone, it’s making sure that all of them deliver a seamless customer experience,” wrote Ciarlo. “If you’re on top of this trend, you are ahead of the curve – a Deloitte (News - Alert) survey shows that less than 20 percent of contact centers have fully integrated their channels.”
Omnichannel customer support is not something you can order from a supplier or a systems integrator. It needs to start from the foundation of the contact center and be built up from there. While highlighting the omnichannel trend, Ciarlo also outlines some of the underlying technologies that contribute to a true multichannel approach: customer-friendly self-service (via a variety of channels), cloud-based solution delivery, mobile apps and…perhaps most dauntingly…a strong interactive social media presence.
“Social media was something that businesses and contact centers of previous generations never had to worry about,” wrote Ciarlo. “But these new online channels should be viewed as an opportunity, not a problem. Incorporate social media engagement into the company’s overall communication strategy. A Facebook (News - Alert) ‘like’ will be read by thousands of other customers and prospects.”
If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. To keep all the balls in the air, the average contact center will need solutions that monitor performance and compliance, keep an eye on metrics and offer customized reporting so contact center managers and chief operating officers can ensure that customers are receiving the service they expect. Putting the channels into place isn’t enough: companies also need to ensure they are working properly, are staffed properly, and are manned by customer support professionals who are empowered to truly help customers and provide an experience in excellence like no other. Otherwise, customers will be quick to find a company that does.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi