The Growth ofMulti-Channel Communication in Contact Centers Whatdoes customer experience really mean in 2018? Communicating with your customerson another level, their level. Whether it’s offering support through achat-bot, providing a convenient way to pay through social media or preppingyour live agents on a customer’s history before chatting with them, everythingin 2018 comes down to customer experience. stat By offering thatmulti-channel customer experience, you can easily unify communicationsinternally and externally to your customers.
In return, you’ll be able toprovide a seamless, real-time customer experience on any channel at any time. In this white paper,you’ll learn… Whatis multichannel communication in the first place?Whatchannels should I be offering?Howdo I know which channels customers prefer?Whatare the benefits of multi-channel communication?Howto eliminate overhead and increase efficiency The Age of The Consumer Multi-channelcommunication empowers the consumer. Although implementing and running a multi-channelcommunication strategy is beneficial to your business if implemented correctly,we’re in an age where technology has given the power to the consumer. Thebiggest part of communication is motivation.
If you think about it, a consumerisn’t likely to interact with your business if it’s not their method of preferredcommunication. According to Gartner, customers will manage 85% of theirrelationship with a business in the digital space without interacting with ahuman by 2020. Ina contact center, a multi-channel communication solution provides a simple, buteffective solution to manage communication workflows of all media types. Allowcustomers the flexibility to choose their preferred method ofcommunications. If you have the mindset and the right tools, you can make sureyour business is prepared to send a customer the right message at the righttime, through the right channel. Keeping Up withTechnology Is Nothing Like Keeping Up with The Kardashians Feellike it’s tough to keep up with technological trends? It is! Technology isgrowing at such a rate that predicting technological advancement is becomingoverwhelming. Take a look at this crazy chart demonstrating Human IntuitivePerspective of Technological Advancement.
To give you an idea, it’s predictedthat technology in 50 years will be a quadrillion times more advanced(2). Ifa contact center is savvy enough to keep up the growth of technology and all ofits innovations, then they can easily stand out amongst their competition. As acontact center manager, you have to ask yourself, what device will a customeruse when they need to contact the company? Is it a chat bot on your website, atext, an email, a quick tweet or shout out on social media, the good old phoneor some other new technology we have no idea about… yet? Omni-Channel vs.Multi-Channel: What’s the Difference? Iflooking at it from afar multi-channel and omni-channel may be to beinterchangeable, but if you wanted to take a deeper dive. Self-service is acritical piece of the omni-channel puzzle. Self-service eliminatesredundancies, aggravation, and inefficiencies in service while simultaneouslygiving customers the power to communicate with you on their terms.
Omni-channel(meaning, “all” channels) unifies sales and marketing to createa single commerce experience across your brand. Multi-channel (i.e.,”many” channels), while less integrated, allows customers to communicate onwhatever channel they prefer. Revolutionizing theCustomer Experience On Every Channel Alldigital channels whether it’s social media, a chat bot etc. have revolutionizedthe way customers communicate and search for information. While voice supportand email continue to contribute value to the customer and the business,ignoring digital channels can be a major risk to take in the present and futurebusiness environment. In a recent survey by Dimension Data, 87% of contactcenters expect to see an increase in non-voice interactions and will heavilyrely on self-serve methods.
So where do you start and how will it benefit yourcontact center? Start with BuildingTrust Deployingmultiple channels to evolve a more customer-centric service strategy, in lightof the new customer purchase journey is crucial. Additionally, modern contactcenter technology applications facilitate a more collaborative and integratedapproach to customer satisfaction, with customer interactions getting collatedacross contact channels to be presented as a single view. In this way, acustomer does not have to explain their issue from the beginning on eachcontact format, and this itself increases their satisfaction with the brand. Add Value Through Strategy Thebiggest challenge when starting a multi-channel communication strategy in acontact center is what channel you start with. It’s two-fold. One, you don’twant to overdo it when a customer just wants to ask a quick question.
Forexample, a one-on-one call isn’t necessary if the customer’s question is, “Whenwill my order arrive?” An email, chat response or quick SMS should be enough inthis case. Hence, a multi-channel contact center allows businesses to choosethe most effective channel to satisfy the customer, in a cost-efficient manner. Customer Service onEvery Level Well,social media has become quite the platform for complaining.
One bad customerexperience and boom the entire experience is on social media and guess who isat fault: your contact center. People share their likes and dislikes with theircommunities on various social networks. According to the PwC total retail survey 2016, 45% of global respondentssaid that reading reviews, comments, and feedback influences their shoppingbehavior (3). Even if you’re not planning on having a complete multi-channelpackage, at least have social channels and be active on them. Businesses can nolonger afford to ignore social media as a marketing and customer servicechannel. 29.
3% of businesses are still without social media channels (5). Digital Channels SaveMoney Thecosts related to digital channels of customer service are estimated to besignificantly lower than traditional call center channels. In fact, 79% canevidence cost savings; 84% an uplift in revenue/profits by committing to theopportunity created by the digital revolution (1).Ifone contact center agent is able to handle multiple live chat windowssimultaneously, it lowers average interaction costs and increases efficiency becausenow employees can multi-task. Several successful organizations are utilizingmethods such as web self-service, online forums, FAQs and community solutionsto garner substantial savings. By 2020, the phone will be used only as aback-up when all self-service channels fail(5).
In fact, the 2017 report saysthat these are the current channels(4): -Web chat: 44.3% to 81.1%- Mobile apps: 41.6% to 75.45%- Social media: 51.4% to 76.
1% Well,the truth is technology is emerging at a rate that people are finding it toughto organize a strategy outlining new developments, skills and future goalswithin the contact center. At this point, in order to solidify the foundationof the contact center today, the use of multi-channel communication stemming fromsoftware needs to take place. Not only that, but it needs flexibility.
Thefocus should be on customer experience, and by having that flexibility to adhereto the growth of communications channels, your customers will be that much morehappier to rate you a 5 on Capterra. The Two Types of AI You’llSee More Of In 2018… According to a study by Oracle, nearly 8 out of 10 businesses havealready implemented or are planning to adopt AI as a customer service solutionby 2020(6). AI, as you may or may not know is a growing trend in contactcenters. That being said, there are two types of ratification intelligence thatyou are going to see grow in 2018.
CyborgA cyborg is a fancy way of saying an “AI-assisted human agent,”amongst other names like Hybrid AI or Human In the Loop. A cyborg starts off as abot that gets information from the customer. At a certain point within theconversation between the caller and the bot, the conversation is thentransferred over to a live agent. If you think about it, now the agent has allof the information they need to further assist the customers and there was notime or effort that the agent had to put in to get that information, allowingthem to focus on more critical efforts.
In turn, customer frustration isreduced and the increase in customer satisfaction plays a key role in theoverall revenue growth of the contact center.Chat Bot 80%of sales and marketing leaders say they already use chat bots in their CX orplan to do so by 2020 (6). A chatbot doesn’t currently have the capability tobe empatheic or as personable as a live agent and they will not be able tooffer the conflict resolution which will fully satisfy customers, but it’sdefinitely not too far in the near future.
Whether voice or text activated,bots can help users find products or answers at any hour of the day, on anydevice or channel faster than ever before. Although a chatbot at this point islimited to the frequently asked questions within a contact center, they do helpregardless as said above to help perepare a live agent should the call escalateto a live agent. ConclusionAmulti-channel communication strategy utilizes any and all available contactchannels in order to increase a customer’s trust and loyalty to the company.
What once was a voice-driven industry, contact centers are no longer seeing the”phone call” as a viable form of communication to support customers. In fact, Phonevolumes have dropped by 17% since 2015 (1). Atthis point, organizations need to take advantage of the fact that things likeAI are just being implemented into the contact center but take note that if thecorrect action isn’t taken now, their contact center could easily fall behindtheir competitors. Fewer than 10% of organizations polled, said that they hadan optimized strategy for digital business in place, while over half (51%)reported they don’t have any plan at all, or are at best in the process ofdeveloping one. What percentage is your contact center? WhitePaper Information Sources: 1. http://alias.cloud-marketing.dimensiondata.
com/Web/DimensionData/%7B4c5f03b2-cd8f-4fac-94fb539d80167de4%7D_2017_Global_Customer_Experience_Benchmarking_Report_Key_Findings_Report.pdf 2. http://theemergingfuture.com/speed-technological-advancement.htm 3. https://www.pwc.
com/gx/en/retail-consumer/publications/assets/total-retail-global-report.pdf 4. https://www.dimensiondata.
com/Global/Downloadable%20Documents/2016%20Global%20Contact%20Centre%20Benchmarking%20Report%20Summary.pdf 5. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2017/10/top-7-trends-for-enterprise-call-centers-in-2018/ 6. https://www.oracle.
com/webfolder/s/delivery_production/docs/FY16h1/doc35/CXResearchVirtualExperiences.pdf Source:https://www.strategiccontact.com/articles/2015/Contact-Center-Omnichannel-Jan2015.pdf Source:https://www.bai.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/pega-contact-center-whitepaper.
pdf?sfvrsn=0 https://sharpencx.com/blog/3-reasons-omni-channel/ Statistics: Accordingto McKinsey’s’Digitizing Customer Care Report’, around 74% of respondents who hadjourneys incorporating different mixes of traditional and digital channelsreported a satisfaction rate of 60-65%, which was higher than that of thoseusing only traditional channels. Multichannelcustomers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers do (http://www.relevategroup.com/blog/did-you-know-multi-channel-customers-spend-3-4-times-more-here%E2%80%99s-6-ways-get-board Accordingto ‘Live Chat: The Gift That Keeps on Giving’1 by the Aberdeen Group, theagent utilization rates of businesses that are live chat users are 28.4%,compared to businesses that are non-users (3.1%). Ina recent survey by Dimension Data, 87% of contact centers expect to see anincrease in non-voice interactions and will heavily rely on self-serve methods.
Accordingto a 2015 Dimension Data survey, 42% of contact centers forecast a reduction invoice contacts, while 87% expect an increase in non-voice interactions goingforward. A good deal of these will involve self-serve methods. The most popularself-service channels include online forums, virtual agents, and mobileself-service. Dimension Data’s 2016 GlobalContact Centre Benchmarking report demonstrates how appealing the shift todigital support is to today’s organisations. Asking them about their ‘desired’split of customer interactions by channel, they averaged at: 42% telephone, 37%self-service, and 29% assisted service.
This contrasts with the average’actual’ existing channel split at the moment which is: telephone 57%,self-service 18% and assisted service 23%. So there is a desire to double theproportion of digital support being offered. Accordingto OneReach, 64% of consumers with texting capabilities would prefer to usetexting to voice for customer service.
