Customers want effortless, personal customer service across all channels including digital channels like in-app and social messengers, but according to IQPC and Gartner, only 5–10% of companies are providing a true omnichannel experience. Forrester’s 2015–2018 contact center report stated that customer experience is no longer improving despite improvement and innovation with vendor technology.
As a small-to-medium sized business (SMB), it may be easy to think small budgets and small teams make it impossible to invest in innovative omnichannel software and provide customer service as well as the larger competitors. But in this week’s webinar, Bright Pattern’s SVP of Marketing, Ted Hunting, and IQPC CCW Digital’s Brian Canton, shared tips on how small and midsize companies can compete and win the cloud customer service game.
TIP #1: Get Your Top Two Channels Working as One
The hardest part of creating an omnichannel contact center for SMBs can be adding a second channel to their voice operations. Many contact centers are looking to add web chat as an additional channel. Hunting recommended getting the channel working seamlessly with voice, where if a customer starts in a web chat, they can easily move to voice or escalate the interaction directly from the web chat window. It is always okay to start small and add additional channels later, but this will be difficult if you don’t set up your second most important channel in an omnichannel environment.
TIP 2: Give Employees the Ability to See Each Step in the Service Journey - Across All Channels
Part of the benefit of having an omnichannel contact center is allowing agents to have access to all customer data from all channels. For example, if a customer is calling in, the agent could see that the customer had emailed a few days ago and had sent a web chat earlier that morning, before calling into the center. Better omnichannel technology with more access to customer insights means a more empowered and engaged team of agents. According to Gallup, highly engaged teams achieve, on average, a 10% increase in customer ratings and a 20% increase in sales. For more information on how omnichannel technology increases agent empowerment read our e-book.
TIP #3: Employees and Customers Use Their Preferred Channel
Customers want to speak with companies the same way they speak with their friends and family. Digital channels are becoming more widely used among all generations and has caused consumers to demand more from companies. As you think about which channels to add to your omnichannel contact center, consider your target market and what channels are most important to them. Also consider how different types of inquiries are better for certain channels depending on complexity, emotional input, and urgency (ContactBabel). Bright Pattern’s omnichannel platform offers voice, video, email, chat, SMS, in-app, and social messenger customer support channels.
TIP #4: Give Agents Help with AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer available to large enterprises only. SMBs can partner with cloud contact center vendors with AI capabilities in a cost-effective way that helps agents perform even better! Small and midsize companies can start with bots to collect basic information and escalate interactions to live agents when needed. Bots and agents can work seamlessly as one channel, letting bots handle easier interactions and ask introductory questions in order to route interactions and continue to learn. AI for midsize companies can also be used to assist agents by providing suggestions to chats, SMS, or emails via Natural Language Processing (NLP) built into the platform.
What to Look for When Selecting a Cloud Contact Center Provider
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An all-in-one solution: Voice, traditional, and emerging channels in a single desktop
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Easy to deploy: In days or weeks without costly professional services
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Nimble and free to make changes: No professional service charges and no IT allows business users to make changes easily
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“Born from the cloud”: Microservices 3.0, not ported from old on-premises solutions
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Simple connection to existing systems: CRM and WFM
Bright Pattern: Made for Midsize Companies
If you are a midsize company, Bright Pattern lets you quickly and easily turn on digital channels — even bots and AI. You can deploy it in weeks at costs lower that other vendors and you can nimbly make changes without costly IT of professional services.
Become a digital business and at a lower cost!
Be nimble! Self provision and make changes on the fly!
Bright Pattern Use Case for Midsize Companies:
Real results from our midsize client, Canary, a home security startup revolutionizing CX:
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Decreased average handle time by 8%
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Decreased average hold time by over 40%
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Increase average time to abandon by 65%
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Increase agent productivity
If you’re a midsize company looking to turn on more channels, begin your digital transformation, or optimize your current multichannel contact center, partner with Bright Pattern today.
