The relevance of digital channels to the customer experience

Did you know that millennials and centennials, who were born between the early 1980s and the late 2000s, are often described as the “mute generation”? They prefer typing to talking and, when they receive a call, they often feel a slight resistance before picking up.

One of the main reasons is that they have grown up in a world where almost everything is handled online: a restaurant booking, a medical appointment or an order confirmation all arrive by email, SMS or WhatsApp.

Another reason is purely psychological: while a phone call forces them to improvise, express themselves in real time and make instant decisions, messages allow them to think, edit and reply when it suits them.

Whatever the reason, it is increasingly important for teams to have contact centre software with digital channels and telephony, enabling them to serve these customers in the environments where they feel most comfortable, without giving up voice for certain cases.

WHY THE PHONE CHANNEL IS NO LONGER ENOUGH IN THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Beyond customer preferences, there are also operational limitations. If we only provide service over the phone, we can end up with overloaded queues, very long waiting times and difficulties in meeting SLAs, among other issues.

If the volume of incoming calls is higher than the team can handle, we can opt for:

• Relying on automations and AI Agents to help us qualify intent and resolve frequent questions or queries related to the company’s documentation.
• Diversifying our customer service channels by allowing customers to contact us via web chat, WhatsApp messages or calls, or email.

Both artificial intelligence and omnichannel strategies are two essential levers for strong CX because, on the one hand, they allow us to combine human empathy with automation and speed and, on the other, they help us be present in the channels where our customers already are, without forcing them to call us for absolutely everything.

More and more customer service teams are dividing their work between agents who handle calls and agents who manage digital channels (web chats, WhatsApp, email and social media). This new set-up allows us to distribute effort more effectively and handle queries from different sources with greater agility.

BENEFITS OF DIGITAL CHANNELS FOR CX

Digital channels offer numerous advantages, especially when we combine them with the phone channel.

1. KEEPING CONVERSATIONS SHORTER AND MORE EFFECTIVE

A web chat or a WhatsApp conversation tends to be shorter and more direct because the customer gets straight to the point, sets out their question in one or two messages and expects an equally concise response. This reduces overall handling time and, at the same time, customers perceive us as a brand that provides quick, immediate answers.

For agents, this format is a clear advantage. They can rely on AI Agents to deal with common queries, respond using predefined templates and get support from an Agent Copilot whenever a doubt arises. In addition, because they do not have to “fill silences” or keep up a continuous conversation as they would on a call, mental fatigue decreases and the feeling of pressure is reduced.

For supervisors and service managers, digital conversations are just as measurable. In these channels it is possible to analyse response times, average duration, reasons for contact or volume by time slot. With this data, resources can be allocated more accurately, bottlenecks identified and decisions made on the basis of data.

2. HANDLING A HIGHER VOLUME OF CONVERSATIONS WITH SHORTER WAITS

One of the major benefits of digital channels is that they make it possible to serve more customers with shorter waiting times. Unlike the phone, where each agent can only handle one call at a time, in chat or messaging a single agent can manage several conversations in parallel.

The customer’s response time is what sets the pace of the interaction, so it is possible to be talking to more than one customer at the same time.

3. BEING IN THE CHANNELS WHERE QUESTIONS ARISE

Questions arise while customers are browsing the website, comparing products, reading the small print of a tariff or checking a confirmation email. At that precise moment, the most natural thing for them is to resolve the issue without changing context: opening a chat on the page itself, sending a WhatsApp message or replying to the email they have just received.

Having contact centre software with digital channels allows you to be present exactly where the need appears. While the phone channel is completely reactive, chat and WhatsApp channels give us the opportunity to be more proactive — a quality that will be key for the customer service of the future.

4. SHARING FILES AND PICKING UP CONVERSATIONS WITHOUT STARTING FROM SCRATCH

Another major benefit of digital channels is how easy it is to share information during the conversation itself: files, screenshots, photos, links, forms or documents. Instead of having to describe a long, complex problem over the phone, the customer can attach clear supporting information. This reduces misunderstandings, speeds up diagnosis and makes the response far more precise.

On top of that, digital conversations automatically create a continuous history. If a customer gets in touch again a few days later, they do not need to repeat everything from the beginning: the agent can review previous messages, recover links, see the files that were sent and understand the context in a matter of seconds.

CALLS AND DIGITAL CHANNELS: THE ESSENTIAL COMBINATION IN CUSTOMER SERVICE

The phone is not going to disappear and it remains a key channel for certain moments: complex complaints, commercial negotiations, delicate situations that require empathy. But in a context where a growing share of customers feel reluctant to pick up a call, basing the experience solely on calls is swimming against the tide.

Choosing digital channels is not a fad; it is a way of respecting the real habits of the new generations and, at the same time, easing the pressure on the teams who handle calls.

When a company is present in the channels its customers already use, offers quick, consistent responses and equips its teams with the right tools to manage them, CX improves… and AX does too. That is when digital channels stop being just an “interesting option” and become a true “must have“.

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