There is a lot of discussion today about whether contact centers are ready to go “omnichannel.” This term goes beyond the traditional “multichannel” and describes a contact center that’s ready to handle customer inquiries that may be spread over several different channels (for example, a customer starts with a chat session than picks up the phone to continue the transaction). In reality, it doesn’t much matter whether companies are ready for omnichannel contact center operations at this time…customers most definitely are.
According to Aberdeen (News - Alert) Research, customers are using up to nine different communication channels to contact companies today, and often using multiple channels for a single transaction. Most contact centers are still optimized to handle telephone only, with other channels bolted on as an afterthought. For this reason, few companies are able to meet customer expectations, and this could be hurting them in sales and high operations costs.
Some companies try and remedy the situation by simply adding more workers, but experts point out that this isn’t a silver bullet, particularly if the overall contact center infrastructure isn’t optimized for omnichannel support.
“The tidal wave of free-form unstructured data rushing into contact centers cannot be managed by simply adding more people,” said Mike McBrien, Principal Consultant at Merlion, addressing a new software product release by Kodak (News - Alert) Alaris that aims to solve the problem. “Adding workers is expensive. Companies need a solution that can automatically categorize that data and give agents a full view of the information needed to resolve an inquiry.”
Some solutions, including the new Kodak Alaris offering KODAK Info Insight Platform, aim to solve the problem with the help of artificial intelligence, analytics and other tools that can help put structured and unstructured data where it needs to be to remain visible across all channels.
“Contact centers have had to adapt to massive change over the past few years as consumers have turned to text, email, and social media for much of their interaction with businesses,” said Dolores Kruchten, President of Kodak Alaris’ Document Imaging Division. “Agents struggle to find the relevant information that often sits in disjointed processes or repositories to meet high customer expectations for fast and comprehensive responses.”
It’s not that agents aren’t looking hard enough. Under pressure to keep calls brief, agents simply can’t “dig” for information to ensure that they are handling the call properly and in context with other media channels the customer may have used. It becomes the contact center’s job to ensure that agents are working on a platform that allows them to deliver customer support via the omnichannel strategy.
Edited by Alisen Downey