Service Culture

YOUR CONTACT CENTRE NEEDS AN OMNICHANNEL STRATEGY

'Omnichannel' is a term which has emerged in the business world since the early 2000s. In retail and marketing, it is usually identified as the drive to make a customer's experience or engagement across different channels seamless. Whether the customer checks out your business online, on social media, or via a visit to your store down the road, you want them to have the same quality and ease of interaction.

This omnichannel way of thinking has spread to several fields, including banking, government and healthcare. The goal is the convenience of the customer, the citizen, or the patient, who is at the centre of all these interactions. In a highly competitive world, you want to hold on tightly to your audience. And what do you do? You design the interaction to suit their preference and not the other way round. You want to ensure that they can transact with you or engage your product or service in the way and via the channel that suits them per time, without disruption.

This mindset has even become crucial in contact centres because of the need to provide several channels for customers to interact with a brand Most contact centres today have transitioned from a single channel point (calls only) to a multi-channel unit. So, they are aware of the need to provide multiple channels.

However, it is not enough to simply maintain several channels. It is essential to integrate the different channels such that interactions made via live chat can be concluded via mail or transactions that commenced through email can be wrapped up with a call and perhaps with a further comment on social media. And these transitions are expected to be seamless. Information shared over phone is expected to still be available to the agent who is responding over chat. One of the most common frustrations of a customer is having to relate information repeatedly to different representatives. And you can only solve this when you have the technology in place to adequately blend the various channels together.

Beyond the technology, it is important to prepare your team to adapt to this reality. It is an orientation to work which anticipates that customers will be making use of different channels in engaging the brand. And they need to be flexible and agile enough to consider what was going on with that customer on other channels before the current interaction. You should also develop processes with this reality in mind.

Such preparedness is essential if we are going to provide customers with a truly omnichannel experience. After all, every business exists for the customer and we must serve them on their own terms.

True, an omnichannel experience can be challenging to create; it is simply not business as usual. But any business that adopts such a way of thinking and puts the right tools and training in place, will have an edge over its competition.