Omnichannel customer engagement means you allow customers to contact you using the media channel of their choosing and from their favorite device. Why would an organization with a contact center wish to engage their customers from an omnichannel approach? There are several reasons with the main one being that it radically improves the customer experience.
As an example, I don’t care for a chat. I have engaged with a service provider using chat only twice in the last five years. My generation generally prefers talking to people. I only resort to chat when a contact center’s queue time is ridiculously long. I’ve noticed there are companies who do not offer voice where my only option is chat. I don’t do business with those companies. If I cannot communicate with a company using my favorite media, voice, I’ll find another company to spend my money with.
A more relevant example would be the younger generations who would prefer to avoid talking if at all possible. They prefer to chat, email, social media, and communication via mobile apps. Does it make sense that these folks will continue to do business with companies where their only media communication channel is a voice? Not if that company has a competitor who allows them to communicate through other media channels that they prefer.
For many organizations, moving from a voice only “call center” to being an omnichannel “contact” center can be tricky. To do so, many have found they have to utilize several vendors to accomplish this. They use one for voice (ACD, IVR), one for the chat, one for email and another for their agents who respond to social media posts. Multiple vendors generally mean multiple interfaces for their agents to utilize. In order to keep things simple, they tend to take their agent pool and assign a certain percentage to voice, a certain percentage to chat, etc. That way, their agents only need to learn one system and interface.
There are some terrific premise based systems on the market that provide omnichannel capabilities. However, they tend to come with a pretty large price tag (Capex). Not to mention that premise-based systems require a team of IT people to manage and maintain them. What does an organization do that wants a solution that is neither complex nor expensive?
Enter Bright Pattern. Bright Pattern is a next generation provider of omnichannel contact center solutions. Using the Bright Pattern platform (called Service Pattern), an agent can handle multiple media transactions (voice, chat, email, video, SMS, mobile, social) from a single interface. Not only that but we provide what we call Media Concurrency which allows an Admin to choose how many concurrent media transactions (and which type) an agent can handle at one time.
Want to learn more about how you can improve your customer experience with a unified, omnichannel solution? Call or email today to schedule a Bright Pattern demo.
by Darren Prine @DarrenPrine
