Omnichannel Call Center Customer CX

The business organization is like an organism, it keeps changing with time. The trigger to change can be intrinsic or extrinsic. And with time, the team changes, and newer people join the workforce. Similarly, your consumers are changing as well. In fact, a new generation of customers is emerging. They are the mobile-first, children of the internet, who witnessed the world outgrow dialer phones and Blackberry. You get the idea! This generation is often referred to as millennials followed by the Gen-Z. They are informed, aware, and expect an omnichannel experience than their predecessors.

The new generation of customers expects omnichannel engagement. They are motivated by experience and not price when it comes to purchasing. They expect an intuitive and intelligent experience from each brand. And they expect it across all the popular and convenient touchpoints. This is the experience economy.

Yes, you cannot restrict your service to one or two primary channels anymore. The modern customer is mobile-obsessed and is actively engaging, purchasing, or reviewing things. At the same time, the average customer’s attention span is also decreasing. With these clauses comes lots of expectations as well. These customers will neither accept waiting in a queue nor will they tolerate excuses. Truth be told, we are all a little spoiled for choice in today’s economy. If I don’t like one brand, I will just switch to another. And it is that simple! Then, how will businesses survive? How will they engage with customers and generate loyalty? The answer lies in your customer engagement strategy.

Around 42% of consumers expect a response immediately. While others are flexible enough to wait for an hour. They also want you to assist them across more than one channel such as mobile app, website, social media, WhatsApp, or email. To be on top of this, businesses need to be proactive. They need to equip themselves with the best of their budget and proceed.

How Omnichannel Can Improve Your Customer Engagement?

You have established your company across all the platforms like website, newsletter, ads, and social media. But these channels are disconnected, every conversation will be isolated, without any perspective or historical data. This results in “engagement in a silo”.

One other aspect that must be considered is that engagement is not limited to customer support. Engaging your customers goes beyond just assisting customers. It is all about creating an experience that will eventually motivate the customer’s purchasing decision. For example, I order once a week from the delivery app Swiggy. And as I only communicate with them via app and email, they have kept me hooked on to their newsletters with essential information, stories about their delivery agents, and even discount vouchers. From time to time, I get a reminder in my inbox and I know I can avail an offer to make a purchase tonight. If at the least, makes me open the application, and then it’s between me and my willpower.

Either way, they successfully engaged me in that scenario. Similarly, your marketing team must leverage the benefits of becoming omnichannel. They must interact and educate customers on their preferred channels. Through the omnichannel solution, your agents will have access to the entire customer journey, tracked across channels through data, analytics and conversations. It will track customer complaints and feedback. All-in-all it will offer you the bigger picture to understand what the customer feels about your campaigns and your products.

The millennial or Gen-Z customer will always jump from channel to channel. While I am in my cab, I engage via my phone whereas, at work and home, I switch to my tablet and my laptop. As my device changes, so does my channels. On phone, I am scrolling through mobile apps, Instagram, and other bite-sized content platforms, whereas on tablet or laptop, I am visiting websites, checking Facebook or LinkedIn, and more. Much like me, other young customers respond the same way. Thus, to make it convenient, allow your clients to start a conversation on any platform from wherever they last left it, without any difficulty.

Once you think about it, you will know that the younger customers are not paying for products or services. They are paying for experiences and the pressure to please them is real. It might be stressful for your budget and personnel to manage multiple platforms. Hence, going back to chatbot technology, integrated into your omnichannel can bring in many benefits. It can assist your team to have more time to focus on priority issues, while the bot takes care of regular queries and quicker resolution. With Omnichannel engagement businesses can seamlessly cater to customers who are on-screen (digital) and over phone calls and can easily switch channels, for example, a chat can be moved to a video call or phone call as that may provide a better resolution. With seamless integration with CRM, the agent over an omnichannel platform can resolve a customer concern far more efficiently. I think this is the best thing that has happened for the agent so that they are no more doing an “engagement in a silo”.

AI technology can also be used to bring direction to your conversations. While omnichannel will showcase the entire customer history for the agent to carry on, it will still need the agent to figure out the next best action. With AI assistance, the agent can verify the customer’s sentiment and make the right calls. This will also give the agent insight into whether it is the right opportunity to upsell. The end-user on the other hand will feel treated right and justly accommodated by the business, making him or her a loyal customer in the long run.

As we jump further into 2022, it is important that businesses will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into customer service strategies. AI is a trending method that promotes efficiency and helps employees to make better decisions. In the same way, being omnichannel will also be a trend in the future as customers are more mobile. For more information on omnichannel, consult with a C-Zentrix Expert.