Mobile, Mobile && Mobile!!
Like all industries, contact center industry is also drastically impacted by emergency of mobile device and consequent change in consumer behavior. This led to the emergence of email, chat and social media as a way of communication with the customers or in fact we moved from a voice based call center to a contact center.
In technical term we call it as multichannel contact center, the contact center which provide multiple medium, i.e. telephone, email, web chat, social media etc. to communicate with the customers
This change in consumer preference, forced the contact center to provide multichannel support, today nearly 70 % of contact center is providing partial or fully multichannel support, many reports even predicts that the other channels will overtake the traditional voice channel.
But the main question is, do multichannel contact centre able to improve customer experience?
Do contact centre able to provide consistent service across multiple channel?
According to the survey done by ICMI (International Customer Management Institute) most of the customers are not satisfied with the current state of multichannel support and many a times due to inconsistent support across the channel, led to dissatisfaction which adversely effect the company’s brand image
The main reasons for the failure current multichannel implementation are:
- Most companies have channel centric approach, companies are using multiple solution for all the channels, even they are handled by different departments. Customer Support department is handling Voice Call, Social Media is handled by marketing team and Email by some other team.
- There is no or little integration of all the channels
The failure of channel centric multichannel contact channel contact centre has led to the emergence of omnichannel contact centre.
Technically, there is subtle difference between omnichannel and multichannel.Omnichannel solution also uses multiple channel to engage customers, but their main focus is to deliver a consistent experience to the customers irrespective of the channels, means whether the customers uses voice, email or webchat etc. , the customer is identified with a single id, receive uniform consistent message irrespective of the channels.
From implementation perspective, the company trying to implement omnichannel, should have a proper customer management strategy, all the channels be integrated and handled by a one department, the look and feel of all channels be uniform and finally the message or communication with the customers should be consistent and seamless across all the touch-points.
One of the main challenge in omnichannel implementation is integration of the channels , the best way to overcome this, is to use a unified platform that supports all the channels or most of the channels and it should be flexible enough to easily integrate with other channels.
With availability of so many solution providers in the market, choosing the right platform and proper due diligence would be key in designing and implementation of an omnichannel contact center.
Finally. the current generation(mainly Millennial generation & Gen Z ) of consumers is highly informed, and their service expectation is rock high. In this globalized highly competitive market, the company able to fulfill customer expectation, would only able to retain customers and would experience sustainable growth
Written By,
Abhay Kumar
Ozonetel Systems Private Ltd
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About Ozonetel: Ozonetel Systems is an India based Cloud Telephony Solution provider, Ozonetel provide complete cloud contact center solution, multichannel( i.e. voice, email, social media, SMS, chat) communication solution and marketing solution i.e. platform to run innovative customized marketing campaign like miss call campaign, sms campaign, email campaign and many more.
Ozonetel is trusted by more than 1000 companies worldwide. For more please visit us over the web at www.ozontel.com< http://ozonetel.com/> or just click here (http://ozonetel.com/customersignup.html) for free demo.