Call Center Management Featured Article
Show You're Flexible and You Care with Omnichannel
When I was a kid, I would get frustrated when my grandmother asked me to repeat something. Now my kid gets agitated when I don’t catch what she says the first time. Just imagine how customers feel when they have to tell their stories to different customer service touch points again and again.
Storytelling is a great tradition. But people don’t like to repeat themselves after they just took the time and trouble to say something the first time. It wastes their time, and it can make the speaker feel like the other party simply couldn’t be bothered to listen.
The good news is that I’m not a kid anymore, and my kid is getting older (and starting to be more patient and talk at a more understandable rate). Oh, and for businesses, omnichannel solutions now provide for a more consistent customer experience across all channels. That’s meaningful for businesses, as Accenture (News - Alert) reports that 65 percent of customers are frustrated by inconsistent experiences.
This challenge is what has led the communications industry and their business clients to shift from multichannel to omnichannel strategies.
“The promise of omnichannel is simple: to provide the customer with a single, consistent, and seamless experience. It’s about putting the customer at the center of the experience,” explains MaritzCX in this blog. “Companies must deliver the same experiences regardless of channel or touchpoint. Customers should be able to complete the same tasks, obtain the same information, and experience the same outcomes regardless of their path.”
The need to deliver omnichannel experiences – which enable businesses to see their customers as whole people instead of a series of unrelated customer interactions – applies across business disciplines (everything from contact center to marketing) and industry verticals. But here’s what research firm IDC (News - Alert) has to say about omnichannel in the retail space.
"To execute current and future customer journeys, retailers need a new unified customer experience architecture that will provide a seamless composition of customer services leveraging information, processes, and channels consistently," says Ivano Ortis of IDC Europe. "The separation of front-end from back-end systems becomes a limitation of traditional retail IT architectures. So, the retail omnichannel commerce platform — based on an artificial intelligence foundation — becomes the key enabler of both short-term omnichannel business goals and future innovation with the insights, speed, and business model agility required to lead retail in the next decade."
Edited by Mandi Nowitz