Why Is The Future Of Customer Service The Omnichannel Contact Center?

No matter how customers communicate with a company, what they want is to resolve their query or problem quickly and without complications.

In this sense, the implementation of omnichannel in contact centers has brought about an important change, since now 70% of users expect to be able to resolve their queries through channels such as email, live chats or social networks. This is the future of customer service for small and large companies.

Meeting those demands requires a service platform that combines all digital channels and data sources in a way that agents can use efficiently and effectively.

These omnichannel call center solutions are specifically designed to address changing customer needs and are outperforming the multichannel tools of legacy call centers.

What Is An Omnichannel Contact Center?

An omnichannel contact center is one in which agents can manage and use all available service channels at the same time. In a modern environment, it also implies that agents use a single software to work on all channels, be it phone calls, emails, SMS or live chats on websites.

By using a single software solution to manage all channels, call centers can create notes on each customer and make them available to the rest of the team for each future interaction. In this way, agents can access the customer file to see what was the reason for their last communication, what problem they had and if it was resolved satisfactorily.

This not only facilitates service delivery, but analysts can review omnichannel data to better understand the recurring issues that could be hurting results.

On the other hand, clients have the perception that agents “know” them because they have access to their history and previous interactions. According to Aberdeen, omnichannel customer experiences and support services have seen a 91% year-over-year increase in user retention rates compared to those call centers without omnichannel solutions, since 2014.

What Is A Multichannel Call Center And How Is It Different From An Omnichannel Contact Center?

The big point of confusion with omnichannel solutions is how they differ from previous multichannel options and why this difference is essential.

Multichannel solutions can offer customers the same methods of obtaining assistance, but these channels are not connected. Therefore, not only will a different agent in a chat or a phone call serve them, but they will also need to re-provide the data and explain the issues when moving between two channels.

Instead, an omnichannel solution has all the options and channels connected, making the customer experience perfect for both your business and the customer.

When the customer opens a chat on your website or app and then clicks to chat, the connecting agent immediately gets the recent chat history. Therefore, he or she has a complete view of the clients and gets to work immediately to solve their problem.

In this way, you can greatly eliminate customer input of duplicate data, solving one of the biggest frustrations with any customer service interaction.

Who Already Uses Omnichannel Contact Centers?

The call center industry leaders may already be using the omnichannel contact center because the solutions are affordable for both SMEs and large organizations.

Global corporations were the first to adopt omnichannel solutions because shared data could facilitate overcoming language barriers and provide 24/7/365 service to customers.

As the technology matured, more functions and capabilities became available to smaller organizations that need to know their customers on preferred channels. Today, digital startups are the most widely adopted for omnichannel software.

E-commerce companies, for example, interact with customers primarily online and through chat.

Omnichannel Offers A Customer-oriented Service

Each client has a preferred way of interacting with companies. Some only send emails while others prefer to call when they have a problem.

Omnichannel contact center solutions offer the same assistance to each client, by integrating data from all contact points; therefore, agents can quickly address customer concerns. Omnichannel solutions further facilitate the use of industry-specific, financial or financial CRM software data. The IT provider or team only needs to work on integrating a single solution to make all data available to agents.

Get to know clients in the channels they prefer with full knowledge of their problems and past experiences through their history. It’s the smart way to help agents deliver high-quality service that increases brand reputation and user retention.