Omni-channel v multi-channel – delivering on customer expectation…
Can Unified Communications alone deliver a great customer experience? This was a question we explored in our blog ‘From UC to Contact Centre – are you ready to boost your information contact centre productivity?’ The modern contact centre, whether that formal or informal, plays a critical part in a company’s ability to stay ahead of competition and keep up with customer demands and this is where the Omni-channel v Multi-channel question comes into play. These demands have changed rapidly in the last year as a result of the pandemic, with customers now using a mix of channels to communicate, while demanding ever more rapid response times.
“70% of customers want a seamless experience when they reach out to customer service. They want to move between channels and conversations with ease and not have to explain their issue time and time again”
Source: Sales Force ‘Customer Expectations
Omni-channel v Multichannel – what’s the difference and why is it important?
When it comes to Omni-channel v Multi-channel, both involve selling products or providing a service across more than one channel. Many contact centres deliver voice, web chat, social media and an email bolt-on but these applications are often managed in silos and are not connected to one another. The customer can’t easily switch from one channel to another without having to repeat themselves before getting a resolution. This is multi-channel which starts very much from each agent operating in its own silo.
The problem is that customers today don’t see a brand or service as a silo and they want to be able to communicate across multiple touch points seamlessly. Forcing a customer to stick to a single channel or making them switch but have to start from the beginning again ultimately creates friction and affects their experience.
Omni-channel starts with the customer in mind and breaks down the silos to join the communication touch points together into a seamless experience. All channels are managed centrally so the customers experience is consistent no matter what channel is used and so they can move between channels and devices without being interrupted. Conversations may start on SMS or web chat for example, but move to a phone call. The difference is that this conversation will have seamlessly flowed between the different channels with no interruption or repetition.
Benefits of omni-channel
Omni-channel is ultimately about understanding your customer’s journey. The concept of the ‘Super Agent’ means agents are trained to deal with a mix of voice, text, chat, social, video and real-time communications in a single consolidated queue. The customer will expect that the agent has all the data needed to solve the problem and that they know all about them based on previous interaction to ensure a resolution happens as smoothly and as quickly as possible.”
Implementing an omni-channel contact centre solution
Organisations that want to create an exceptional customer experience need to consider how they will deploy a fully integrated omni-channel contact centre solution to support all channels of choice. Before implementing an omni-channel solution, its import to evaluate what channels should be available to your customer, which they prefer to use along the journey and how you will train your agents to deal with these interactions.
It’s vital to choose a partner that can advise on the various options available and provide a tailored solution to match business and customer requirements alongside budget and ROI.
Partner with Opus to deliver an Omni-channel Customer Experience
Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) is a cloud-based business solution intended to help companies access the service they need to support their customers over the cloud. The CCaaS model is ideal for contact centres of all sizes as it offers the scalability required to change your environment as the business needs evolve, along with the flexibility of being able to pay to purchase and pay for only the tools you need at the time.
At Opus we can implement a state of the art CCaaS solution with our industry leading partners to provide the exact omni-channel contact centre solution that is required.
