What Is Omnichannel Customer Experience?
As technology continues to reinvigorate and revolutionize industries across the world, it seems like no business is immune to the benefits that tech promises. One enterprise area that has been particularly transformed by technology is the call center. Indeed, compared to past images of phone operators feverishly dialing numbers from a long list of leads, call centers have gone through considerable innovation. One of the reasons for this is the way that software developers have risen up to meet the needs of large companies that value efficiency in their approach to providing top-flight customer service. Perhaps the most exemplary evidence of this is how omnichannel call center software has changed the way that businesses interact with their customers.
photo/ geralt
Gerd Altmann
Omnichannel call center software meets customers where they are
One of the biggest benefits of adopting omnichannel call center software is the power that it grants you to meet your customers where they are. Not everyone is able to engage with support agents or sales reps via telephone, especially during work hours. That said, there are still times when a customer has an urgent need and requires assistance in a timely manner. Omnichannel call center software offers your customers flexibility in the way that they interface and communicate with your business, by including live web chat, video chat, email, and text messaging as potential methods of communication, in addition to a traditional phone call. Not only does this provide greater customer satisfaction thanks to their ability to reach you in a convenient manner, this also means that your agents can be more productive, since multiple texts or web chats can be fielded at once, unlike phone calls. This unified approach helps your agents do their jobs better and can even help you understand customer behavior and preferences with powerful analytics tools. With more customer data and more productive agents, you can continue to improve your approach and meet your customers’ needs.
An omnichannel approach is seamless
While it’s pivotal to be able to reach your customers with a wide range of communication options, it’s just as important to recognize that there are inherent strengths and weakness to each form of communication. For example, extremely technical troubleshooting is best handled with a video chat and the ability to screen share. On the contrary, many simple questions don’t actually warrant a full phone call when email or SMS would suffice.
Omnichannel call center software juggles these differing priorities beautifully. If an agent recognizes that a different form of communication would be better suited for solving a particular issue, they can quickly shift mediums seamlessly, without breaking communication. This also provides greater productivity amongst your agents, since information only needs to be gathered once. Equally as important is the fact that this approach also means that your agent ends up solving a customer’s issue on the very first interaction with support. This translates to major dividends when it comes to customer satisfaction, since addressing and solving a customer’s request the very first time they reach out has been linked with the kind of positive customer experience which converts everyday customers into brand advocates. For improving productivity and customer experience, an omnichannel solution is incredibly powerful.
Unlike a multichannel approach, an omnichannel contact center provides agents and customers with a single, seamless way to interact with each other. By unifying the way that a single agent handles a variety of communication approaches, it’s possible to retain context and solve a customer’s problem the very first time they reach out. These benefits alone are reason to consider making the switch in your call center to an omnichannel software solution, as customer service has become a make-it or break-it aspect of running a business online in the 21st century.
