Three Tips to Consider When Developing Your Contact Center Omnichannel Strategy

Today, there are a variety of ways to get in contact with a customer, in fact, a GWI study revealed that the average digital consumer owns 3.64 connected devices - meaning three times as many access points to your customers. But, in order to adapt to today’s omnichannel world and effectively engage with customers, call centers need to provide an uninterrupted, integrated user experience across all connected devices.

To help contact centers develop a robust omnichannel strategy, below are three tips to consider.

1.    Deploy mobile solutions

A recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center found that 95 percent of Americans own cell phones, and 77 percent of cell phone owners own a smartphone.  With the overwhelming dependency on mobile technology, it should come as no surprise that mobile technology is a significant component of omnichannel solutions.

Contact centers should look to incorporate features such as short message service (SMS) and ringless voicemail to their omnichannel approach. With SMS, contact center agents and customer service professionals can instantly respond to customers’ needs, confirm appointments, send payment reminders and even alert individuals of emergencies via text messages. With ringless voicemail technology, contact centers can instantly send a voicemail directly to the voicemail boxes of thousands of customers all at once.

Both SMS and direct-to-voicemail technologies allow contact centers to engage with customers in a non-invasive manner, allowing customers to listen, respond and save messages at their leisure. Furthermore, mobile omnichannel solutions allow contact centers to reach “on-the-go” consumers at any time and are generally more time and cost efficient.

2.    Be online and in the cloud

With the recent breakdowns in corporations like Aspect and Avaya, companies are increasingly turning toward cloud-based platforms to meet their company needs. Cloud-based technology is not only faster, but it's also more user-friendly, scalable and requires less maintenance than on-prem solutions.

As methods of interaction changes among consumers, so should the channels of communication for contact centers. Upon adopting a cloud-based call center platform, companies will be able to instantly and effortlessly deploy a comprehensive outreach campaign that entails emails, social media, and online chat. By creating more communication channel opportunities, and equipping contact centers with the right tools to empower both agents and consumers further to connect seamlessly, contact centers can enhance the overall customer experience.

3.    Look to automation for help

With more opportunities to reach customers on a variety of devices, contact centers should consider automating some of their services to spread communication efforts across inbound, outbound and blended outreach.

A study by Gartner predicted that 85 percent of customer interactions would occur without human-to-human interaction by 2020. As customers become frustrated with longer response times via phone, email and/or chat, the transition to automated services becomes more applicable and relevant to contact centers. Leveraging automation in your overall omnichannel strategy will provide customers with immediate answers, offer breathing room to your call center agents and improve the overall customer-agent experience.

The primary goal of omnichannel solutions is to provide a seamless experience across multiple channels and devices. In the future, call centers will be expected to approach customer’s using the customer’s preferred mode of communication (text, call, email, chat, etc.). Contact centers are expected to provide various contact options and efficient ways to respond to client inquiries. If omnichannel solutions are executed successfully, contact centers might evolve into communication centers or engagement centers of the future.

Need help developing your omnichannel strategy? Register for this half-day workshop at ICMI Contact Center Demo.