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Are you part of the 80% of enterprises that feel their current customer service systems do not meet their future needs? Read on for surefire solutions to successfully shift to becoming an omnichannel contact center.
To enhance customer satisfaction, more and more companies are transforming into an omnichannel contact center, providing a frictionless customer service experience across multiple touchpoints. A truly authentic omnichannel customer experience is achieved when the consumer can seamlessly transition between any device and platform—including the web, voice, chat, messaging, social media, video and email.
To enable this omnichannel experience, companies and customer service operations are integrating new technologies, and upgrading their existing ones.
Why businesses need omnichannel customer service
Improving the quality of customer-agent communication while managing call center volume is one of the primary challenges for every support operation. Failure to minimize hold times and maximize first call resolutions directly affects customer satisfaction and retention.
According to Zendesk, almost 60% of customers feel that long holds and wait times are the most frustrating parts of a service experience. As good service starts with good communication, businesses are increasingly turning to omnichannel contact centers to deepen their level of customer engagement.
Queue management solutions including self-service, hierarchy routing and virtual hold have each been proven to reduce call abandonment rates and improve agent productivity. Despite these enhancements, modern support centers recognize the need for continuous development and adaptability in order to meet (and anticipate) the omnichannel needs of their customers.
With an omnichannel contact center, companies provide the same customer service across multiple platforms, such as:
- Chat
- Messaging
- Social media
- Video
- Voice
- The web
Consumers are able to easily shift between these platforms leading to a smoother support process and higher customer satisfaction.
The challenges of incorporating omnichannel customer support
However, delivering the much-desired omnichannel experience comes with its own set of challenges. Quality service must be provided at every touchpoint, and individual channels must be streamlined into a single cohesive omnichannel experience. In order to ensure the customer-facing journey is seamless, the enterprise must provide agents with everything they need to deliver on the omnichannel promise.
One of the biggest challenges is handling data. Considering that contact centers today hold immense repositories of customer data, processing this information is no simple feat.
Every interaction, touchpoint and communication is captured and stored, and how a contact center handles its data is critical to its success. In practice, agents accessing an open customer care case must sift through increasingly complicated data sets and perform a time-consuming analysis in order to form a comprehensive picture of the customer’s profile.
At the same time, today’s rapid methods of engagement have conditioned customers to expect immediate response times. The result is extreme pressure on agents and the customer service system to process data effectively within seconds. This leads to the need for omnichannel customer experience solutions.
The visual omnichannel contact center solution
Research shows that 90% of all information transmitted to the brain is visual, and approximately 65% of the population are visual learners, with people processing visual images 60,000 times faster than via text.
It therefore only makes sense that the visual experiences are gaining traction within customer interactions, and are poised to become the dominant channel for customer communications. According to technology giant Cisco, video will account for 820% of all Internet traffic by 2022, up from 72.3% in 2017.
Businesswire cites a study that indicated high numbers of people preferring visual communication, such as 78% of millennials saying photos and videos help them make purchase decisions.
Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and 360° video are already making headway as enhanced forms of visual engagement – IKEA has developed a concept kitchen that suggests recipes based on the ingredients on the table, Gap has launched a Virtual Dressing Room app, and Target has introduced a 360-degree design shopping experience.
Omnichannel contact center + visual support = killer customer care
Delivered through smart and interactive technology, visual support drives quality communication, builds customer confidence in the agent, and makes the overall call center experience more efficient and enjoyable. It shortens agent calls, increases first call resolution, reduces technician dispatches, and most importantly, increases customer satisfaction and reduces churn.
Visual engagement has been proven especially effective within the omnichannel customer support experience across a wide range of sales, marketing and customer service and support scenarios, providing the quickest route to success and resolution in a number of use cases.
Omnichannel video can be used to efficiently analyze customer data, such as items of particular interest, product preferences or purchase history. In addition, visual augmented support can be used to solve technical problems, or to resolve complicated billing disputes, among others.
Efficacy of visual omnichannel within customer service
With TechSee, traditional customer service is transformed into a visual experience, enabling companies to virtually enter the world of the customer, including his home environment, technology, vehicle and closet. This opportunity, driven by the available technology, has given rise to new visual omnichannel experience solutions that call centers can’t do without.
