As the modern contact center moves its focus towards a true omnichannel experience where customers can receive high levels of service via text, web chat, email, and social media, do we still need to be focused on traditional phone calls? It’s an interesting question since the pandemic has led to a massive shift in communication channels.
According to Pew Research, social channels have exploded in usage over the past year, especially within younger demographics. Customers are connecting with their favorite brands more than ever before through social channels such as Instagram, Facebook, and other social sites. Web chats, SMS, and in-app chats have also grown in popularity while email inquiries have remained on par with recent years.
However, that alone is not a signal in decreasing voice calls. In a recent survey, Twilio found that 58% of all Americans have reached out for support over the past 12 months and 66.8% of respondents preferred phone calls over any other channel. While that may seem contradictory to the previous statistics provided, it gives critical context to consumer expectations. We will discuss a few of those trends below and how it relates to voice.
Customers Expect Anywhere, Any-Device Customer Service
While the modern contact center has grown in terms of channels it supports, support reps are finding that their customers are using those channels in a variety of ways. For example, a web chat is a great way to reach out while shopping online to ask questions about stock levels or promotional pricing. Video chat is growing in popularity for product support, while text or email has become an easy way to ask questions on the go.
Each of these channels serves a niche within your customer base to request information in a fast, convenient way. As you incorporate more of these channels, it alleviates a direct burden on your customer service representatives during high call volumes.
Reducing the Need for Senseless Customer Escalations
However, a large part of resolving customer issues during the first interaction is moving from a multichannel to an omnichannel environment within your contact center. While you may be engaged on more channels than ever before, having your agents on separate platforms for each channel means that they probably do not have a seamless view of customer histories. This leads to more transfers, more validations, and ultimately longer hold times with inferior levels of service.
Modern cloud contact centers eliminate these problems by allowing your agents to switch from text to a chat or a video call whenever it is appropriate, all within the same platform with a centralized customer database. That allows each rep to accomplish more with each interaction while remaining highly efficient as well.
Delivering a Universal Experience Regardless of Contact Type
As your contact center matures on a modern CCaaS platform, tools like advanced IVR’s, skills-based routing and workforce management continue to make voice communication more efficient—even when the interactions start on other channels. The real goal is to provide a seamless experience so that your text, email, voice, and video don’t feel like completely different channels, with completely different levels of service to the customer.
Suellen Meyers: December 21, 2023
Keith Koons