There has been an explosion of communication options in the past few years, and now we’re just as likely to text, chat or even video conference as we are to make a telephone call—not to mention interacting with each other on social media.
Consumers have adapted to the new communication options, but businesses by and large are a bit behind. While some companies have recognized that they must deliver customer support via all major channels, many have not. They might have social media accounts to push out their latest marketing message, and they probably now integrate email in their customer support operation. But far too firms still have not truly embraced a multichannel approach.
Not only are consumers starting to expect that they can reach companies through the same channels they use with friends, but each channel also has its own particular strength. Businesses can leverage multichannel communications both to delight customers and drive more efficient customer interactions.
Rich communications suite (RCS) technology can help businesses reach customers on any channel. RCS serves as a unified communications platform that brings together phone calls, chat, text, social media and video calling into a single interface. This makes it easier to move among various communications channels in a single interaction.
Not only must the right technology be in place, though, but employees also must have the right skills to properly leverage all available mediums.
This is less of an issue for younger employees in the Millennial generation; they’ve grown up with such unified communications. But for older employees, it is important to make sure they have the skills to succeed in a multichannel environment.
Specifically, first and foremost all employees must have proficient writing skills. While the need to spell largely has been muted by autocorrect, there’s still the need to properly punctuate and put together ideas in a written form.
It also is important that employees learn how to effectively multitask and keep cool in the fast-paced realm of social media.
Further, with the introduction of video for customer interactions, employees need to increasingly be comfortable talking on-camera. This last skill was particularly hard for me personally, but we all need to be comfortable with video now.
While many businesses are still slow to adopt multichannel communications, they can’t wait much longer. If they do, the competition will eat their lunch.
Edited by Alisen Downey