3 Reasons Omnichannel Contact Centers Are the Future

Ensuring a seamless customer experience is the ultimate goal of any consumer-facing brand.
Customers usually get frustrated with broken lines of communication, or a generic Interactive Voice Response(IVR) messages. That’s why brands are investing in better artificial intelligence(AI) and natural language processing(NLP) capabilities to ensure that customers feel like their issues are being understood.
Data from Microsoft State of Global Customer Service report suggests that:

customer service impacts brand choice for more than 95% of customers globally.’

There is a significant shift towards capturing the customer experience(CX) effectively. It includes gathering data and insights about incoming customer queries, along with essential information relating to customers’ background.
Brands are leveraging customer data in innovative ways to deliver unique customer journeys. Existing customer need different messages when compared to new leads. Companies are using other strategies to deliver an awesome customer service.
At the same time, customer expectations continue their steady climb. The mode of conversation is no more split only between phone and email. Each customer has their preferences, and needs personalized interaction based on their query. Regardless of which channel they choose; customers bring high expectations across all service channels. They expect the quality and timeliness of the service interactions are soaring.

More than 60% of customers interact through multiple channels and irrespective of time, place, device, or medium, they expect consistency.'

As a result, organizations are constantly evolving their support models to accommodate this ever-changing landscape.Digital innovators are shifting towards the omnichannel business model, rather than the traditional single-channel or multichannel models.

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Omnichannel customer contact centers provide a streamlined and data-based approach to customer care. Omnichannel centers have the requisite data to create informed decisions. Proper alignment and application of digital tools like video chats and AI-powered virtual agents as a part of an omnichannel approach will help you achieve a level of support that’s sure to delight your customers.

Here are three important reasons why omnichannel contact centers are the future of better communication:

#1. Efficient Communication at Scale

One of the greatest advantages of having an omnichannel approach is to leverage efficient communications at scale. What this means for businesses around the world is better conversations with customers that are housed under one system. The omnichannel approach allows for better integration of data between multiple communication tools, and support agents can access all relevant information under one system.
Businesses around the globe are improving customer experience as a core strategic focus. Brands are developing more efficient AI chatbots to ensure that customer communications remain goal-oriented.
A perfect example of this is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines that used a chatbot to increase efficiencies in communication. It leveraged the power of AI to enable better recommendations, enhance the quality of communication, and enable agents to have better data. The omnichannel chatbot enabled the customer care system to handle 1.4 million customer queries in 10 different languages for 24 hours a day.
It also saved more than 5 million clicks by automated forms and saw an increase in case volumes by 100%. This meant that chatbots could enable better communication, and a rise in customer queries at the same time. For a thriving business, there could be no better news than this. Omnichannel customer care management is the way to go for the foreseeable future.

#2. Automating Communication for Better Results

Automation in communication can truly be explored when companies have an omnichannel business model. This is because the agent will receive a full breakdown of customer information, along with the query they wish to resolve.
What’s more, some omnichannel customer service solutions like ThinkOwl have great AI-enabled features like auto-routing of customer cases to the agent with the right skills to handle it.
Additionally, as automation saves time and cost, there are additional benefits to filtering out simple-to-answer queries. ThinkOwl has pre-defined smart responses or message templates, agents can send to customers looking for an instant first response. This enhances the quality of experience offered and saves the time of the agent.

Also Read: How to Turn Your Team Super-Productive with ThinkOwl

Ultimately, having an omnichannel contact center helps customers reach an agent faster. There is little to no need for extended routing and all the information is present under one system. The agent can be empowered to resolve queries as they have all the necessary information available to them under a single dashboard. The future is moving towards omnichannel, with a stronger focus on automating conversations to create better resource management.

#3. A Data Based Approach to Customer Experience

Having a customer journey that is robust and comprehensive is the key to better communication. An omnichannel setup is essential to ensure that the entire journey of customer communication is mapped under one dashboard.
This brings increased transparency to the system and allows companies to make better CX decisions. They can find weak spots in current communication and enhance the areas that need more input. Transparency is also important when you have to launch new products, issue new lines of service, etc. It brings an additional layer of insight into strategic communications.

Also Read: Discover, the Easy-to-Use Analytics Tool by ThinkOwl

Research from Forrester shows that companies that lead in CX outperform others in the S&P 500 index by 80%. They have a higher market share and their customers are 7 times more likely to purchase more from them. Better CX has also shown to lead to better word of mouth marketing, which enhances the organic appeal of the brand.
When companies adopt a data-based approach to CX, they can do so via an omnichannel call center. This gives them enough insights and data to improve their communication with customers over various channels.

The Bottom Line

In today’s, on-demand digital world, businesses need to understand the entire customer journey and apply the right technology at the right time to boost customer engagement. The omnichannel approach to customer service provides convenience and accessibility for customers to interact over their preferred channels.
The digital age calls for change. Consistent pro-active efforts to build omnichannel contact centers and deliver cross-channel services will put organizations ahead in maintaining good relationships with their customers.

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