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 innovations for 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 this blog will share 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. Ted Hunting, Bright Pattern’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, recommends 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.
Tips to Win:
- Let agents see each step in the current customer’s journey with full context from each interaction
- Offer a unified agent desktop to make communicating easier and more personal
- Reduce effort by enabling customers to use their preferred channels without having to repeat themselves
- Make it easy for agents to see a customer’s complete journey history if needed
For all 4 tips read our e-book "Tips for Midsize Companies to Win the Cloud Customer Service Game"
