The purpose of implementing new technologies in your omni-channel contact center is to delight and better serve customers and create brand loyalty. However, implementing disparate new communication channels more often than not annoys customers, rather than delighting them.
Customers will inevitably have problems or questions about your products or services. A product may need to be returned, or there may be a complaint about a service. Many customers may access their account through your web site, browse the knowledge base, look at the FAQ, or run a search before they send an email to support or initiate a request for help on Twitter. At some point, they might also want to speak to a human being, and make a call into the contact center. It’s possible the answering agent may need to transfer callers to another department or specialist.
Imagine the customer is already frustrated and expects a smooth customer service experience from yo
ur business. You don’t want your customer to have to repeat or re-enter any information they’ve already provided at any point on other channels. You don’t want the customer’s request to start all over from the ground up each time the customer crosses a channel. This will turn a frustrated customer into an ex-customer.
Omni-channel contact center solutions address and remedy these potential problems. The customer’s information is fully available to the customer service representative who sees at once not only the customer’s history with your business, but any interactions across other channels. The customer’s self-service history is captured and available to any AI bots running on email and to the customer service representative. As the customer moves from chat to phone, and from customer service representative to specialist, the transitions are seamless as the customer’s interaction information transfers across channels.
Skills-based routing allows the customer service representative to immediately see which specialists are available and on which channels (phone, chat, social, etc.). When the transfer is made, the specialist already has all of the information the agent had, and having done a quick search of the knowledgebase, greets the customer with information rather than a request for information. From the customer’s point of view, the conversation simply continued in a progressive path toward the resolution of their issue.
Customers are more likely to buy more and be more receptive to cross/up-sell after a positive customer service experience. However, in the absence of this omni-channel consistency across the interaction and transaction, providing cross-/up-sell opportunities is only going to give your company more ways to annoy your customers.
So how can you make sure your organization is providing consistency across customer communication channels? Check out our guide to find out how to implement the Microsoft stack into your omni-channel contact center:
Omni-channel Contact Centers: Delightful or Annoying to Users?
by Jane Louis on January 22nd, 2018 | ~ minute read
