What is an Omnichannel Call Center?
An Omnichannel Call Center is a customer experience strategy for delivering a seamless experience across multiple channels. “Omni,” translates to “all” and omnichannel means all channel, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the call center would operating all known and possible mediums of communication. Instead, omnichannel call center integrates all channels of communication in such a way to provide a seamless experience to the customers.
The rise of the omnichannel call center is due to the tech-savvy customers, who demand the ability to contact a call center through their preferred channel. It has become crucial that call centers allow the customers to connect through their method of choice.
The rise of the omnichannel call center is due to the tech-savvy customers, who demand the ability to contact a call center through their preferred channel. It has become crucial that call centers allow the customers to connect through their method of choice.
Why You Should Adopt Omnichannel Approach for Your Call Center
Increases Agent Productivity
While over the phone, an agent can handle only a single customer. Other channels, like chat and email, allows an agent to manage multiple customers at once. This frees up agents’ time, allowing them to focus on much more complex issues and add value to the call center processes.
Provides Customer Insights
Omnichannel call centers integrate medium of communication like chat and social media. This gives the call center more than one data collection point. The collected data can be analyzed to get a wider picture of how your customers are interacting with your business for their needs across on different channels. The gathered data can help you serve your customers better.
Brings Out the Best in Agents
Omnichannel call center allows agents to quickly respond to client’s queries, which means that agents have more time on their hand that can be utilized for training agents for more complex situations. Not only will this be a bonus for your organization, but it will also make your agents feel more efficient. It makes them feel more fulfilled with their jobs.
Cost Saving
Integration of different communication channel may sound expensive, but it isn’t. In fact, it is cost-effective as you won’t have to hire dedicated agents for a particular channel. Also, most popular channels for customer resolution tend to be “self-help” kind, as most customers prefer to look for an answer themselves.
All this helps take a huge workload off the agents’ shoulders, as the technology does most of the heavy lifting.
How does Omnichannel Call Center Works?
A multi-channel call center integrates multiple communication channels into a single channel that is centrally managed. Although the term omni-channel means all channel, it does not usually include all platforms. The most usual platforms integrated in omni-channel call center are:
Omnichannel call center integrates the abovementioned platforms in such a way that customers get a seamless experience, no matter what the channel they are on.
Different Sectors Where Omnichannel Call Center is Used
Finance
Finance is one of the newest sectors utilizing the omnichannel call centers. Banks and NBFCs use omnichannel call center to provide their customers with multiple platforms for seeking support. The various platforms used here are Mobile Apps with chat options, call centers, and social media platforms. It is not only used to provide customer service but also to increase their customer base.
Government
Government agencies have just started using omnichannel call centers, and they still lag behind other industries/sectors. Governments are using call centers as a complaint collection centers. On the other hand, social media platforms are being used not only to disseminate information but also get feedback on them from the beneficiaries.
Retail and E-Commerce
Retail and e-commerce industries are one of the biggest users of omnichannel call center. The rise of social media and mobile phones have led to a drastic change in the retail and e-commerce area. The omnichannel support has ensured that customers can reach the business anytime they want and from almost anywhere.
Features of an Omnichannel Call Center
Effortlessly Manage Conversations
Omnichannel call center allows you to effectively manage interaction as it acts as a one-stop center for customer’s query resolution through chat, phone, or email. You can use the call center to initiate or receive communication from customers, across all the channels, as well as equip your agents to retrieve relevant customer information with a single click.
Automate Operations
With the Omnichannel approach, you can easily automate operations at your call center. You can easily append multiple communications to a single conversation, helping agents avoid the loss of the context. You can also create automation rules that are based on events and time-based triggers. All these features help save time and improve interactions with the customers.
Map Customer Journey
You can map a customer’s journey with an omnichannel solution regardless of the communication channel used. The map will provide a complete picture of the customer’s conversation history across all the channels, allowing the unification of the conversation without losing the context of the it.
Reporting
You can monitor all the call center interactions by getting full reports for email, chat, and voice. It helps you know how productive an agent was by monitoring relevant metrics. You can also monitor processes on a real-time basis.
