Preparing Your Call Center for Omnichannel

Setting up the contact center for omnichannel success

3
omnichannel call center
Contact CentreInsights

Published: February 23, 2023

Charlie Mitchell

As customers diversify their channel footprint, brands must also keep up. 

Indeed, as McKinsey & Company suggests: “Customers believe they can get whatever they want, whenever they want, within minutes.”

Brands are eager to scale from pure-play call centers to omnichannel operations to appease modern customers, adding integrated channel capabilities.

A recent Cisco survey underlines this, revealing that 91 percent of contact center managers mentioned “integrated omnichannel” as a top-three priority, requiring strategic investments. 

However, an omnichannel operation functions differently than a traditional call center. Here are the foundational steps to prepare for this change.

Connect Each Channel to a Central CRM and Agent Desktop

When each channel connects to a central CRM system, agents can view the customer’s conversational history and offer personalized support. 

By then plugging the CRM into other systems, including order management, document management, and VoC software, the agent can view the customer journey in a single thread. 

Moreover, with an omnichannel desktop, agents can leverage multiple channels simultaneously to escalate the conversation and take advantage of various media. For instance, they could take a payment on chat and then send a confirmation SMS message within moments. 

Develop an Intuitive Agent UI

Agents shouldn’t have to switch between multiple systems and interfaces when handling interactions across channels. 

Packing each channel into neat channel tabs is helpful, with personal statistics, work bins, and templates all accessible within the space. 

Investing in a unified desktop will help to achieve this. But it’s also good to set up custom automated triggers to quickly change the channel, access internal systems, send post-call follow-ups, and more. 

Connecting the desktop to a UCaaS platform, so the agent can easily share their case with an SME for guidance is also a helpful support mechanism in today’s remote working world.

Train Agents on New Channel Capabilities

Agents often resist change to the technologies they use – even if it’s designed for their benefit. As such, engaging them early with the new functionalities is often critical while highlighting the new system’s benefits. 

It can be helpful to begin the transition by rolling out small-scale responsibilities on one channel first and only routing simple queries to it. Doing so increases their familiarity with the technology in a safe, comfortable environment. 

Also, as agents may escalate the contact between channels, training them when to do so is best practice. 

So, if a particular contact comes through chat – for example – but the agent realizes it is much simpler to handle via voice, it is best practice to offer an escalation for the agent, customer experience, and business costs.

Considering how agents do this may become a part of the new quality monitoring criteria, which contact centers should reevaluate, after shifting to the cloud. 

Keep Monitoring Omnichannel Performance

Continuous omnichannel reporting across various channels is critical – including automated channels too. Doing so helps to safeguard the service experience. 

Getting more granular and monitoring these KPIs across various intents ensures agents are set up for success when handling every customer query across all customer engagement channels.

To delve deeper into the specifics, check out our long-form article: How to Design an Omnichannel Customer Experience

 

Customer Engagement CenterOmni-channel
Featured

Share This Post