Omni-Channel Customer Engagement Article

Can you name the last time you looked for the 800 number to try and reach a company with a question or issue? This type of interaction is becoming more rare among certain segments of the marketplace, especially if common calls are often met with long wait times. Many of us seek omni-channel customer engagement through social media, web chat and more, avoiding the live call altogether.

In fact, according to Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), the multichannel experience is becoming more and more common. Either consumers are being trained that the live call is not the most optimal through complicated calling trees, automated operators who don’t understand the caller or the hold time due to poor forecasting and understaffing, or new technology is simply changing the way we do things.

The reality is we’ve become less patient as consumers. What may have been an acceptable hold time 10 years ago will no longer stand and the immediate access to multiple channels through smartphones and other mobile devices has created a whole new demand. The challenge to overcome is how to best implement the omnichannel customer experience to meet changing trends, while also maintaining the higher customer satisfaction levels companies seek.

Across APAC, the contact center is evolving and the need for the omni-channel customer engagement experience is real. This drives the need for fundamental changes in all customer interactions, but that’s much easier said than done. For instance, there may still be a need for the live interaction in addition to self-service options. Communication channels tend to be siloed, demanding information capture in customer records by the agent. This practice takes time and can cause the live interaction to take even longer.

Extend this to the self-service channels – can you ensure that these interactions are captured correctly to deliver the seamless customer experience? Yes, solutions exist that can be implemented to drive consistent information across all channels. That doesn’t mean there aren’t practical challenges to making this happen effectively and efficiently. While the goal is to meet the omnichannel demands of the APAC market, there are also needs within the organization that must be met.

At the same time, these challenges don’t even take cost into consideration. Can the market bear an increase in the cost of your products or services to support the expansion into the omnichannel customer engagement environment? Or, does it make more sense to leverage hosted or cloud-based options that keep the cost down, allow for more flexibility and scalability and deliver a broader set of capabilities to meet the need?

There is still much demand for the contact center in the global marketplace, but the center must be able to adapt to the changes of a fluid market. With due diligence in planning and the selection of the right solutions, the optimal experience can be created. Just be ready to make changes as you go.