5 Factors of Omnichannel Contact Center Success in the New Normal

omnichannel contact center success

Every contact center has a universal goal: to provide exceptional customer service. But doing so isn’t always that simple. It requires a holistic customer experience (CX) strategy, a responsive data strategy and the flexibility to adapt to a changing world.

As we continue to social distance, self isolate and get used to a new normal, it’s more important than ever for contact centers to focus on their overall strategy. With many contact centers seeing higher volumes of customer interactions, the five factors for success can help to facilitate great customer care in even the most chaotic of times.

We’ve designed the Foundations of Omnichannel Contact Center Success to help organizations achieve digital transformation and customer service excellence. With the right solutions in place, contact centers of any size and in any industry can realize fast time-to-value, improved productivity and increased customer loyalty.

CX Strategy

The foundation for omnichannel contact center success is your long-term strategy. A big part of that is the data you will use to inform and support business objectives. Customer interaction data specifically is part of the foundation of any omnichannel and digital conversation strategy. It provides you with a full view of every interaction along the customer journey, including real-time and historical agent and customer context. Coupled with transcripts and recordings, interaction data will give you a full view of your engagements. This is your fuel to evaluate business performance and develop long-term strategies to improve the customer and agent experience, and ultimately influence First Contact Resolution (FCR).

Management

Now that you have a strategy, it’s time to put your focus on management. The key to effective contact center management is consistency — consistency in tracking and reporting on channels, agents and teams. This provides the information needed for effective performance management, as well as business-level reporting. A consistent management structure simplifies operations for the overall organization while allowing for new channels or functions to be introduced without creating new servicing and management silos. A common link between channels is needed to determine if your contact center, digital and self-service strategies are effective. By focusing on the reason for the customer interaction, and developing processes and systems based on the needs of your customer, you can provide great service that will differentiate your business from your customers.

Context

Customer context-data is the key to providing a personalized customer experience. During this phase of building your omnichannel foundation, it’s important to have systems that empower agents to personalize every customer interaction, regardless of the channel.

Now more than ever, it’s imperative that agents have access to the basic context of incoming contacts. As customers have access to so much information online and can self-serve for many basic requests, the bulk of incoming interactions into contact centers are for more complex issues. Agents need to be aware of the customer’s entire journey with as much context as possible to ensure customers aren’t having to repeat themselves. To empower agents for success, customer data should be accurate, complete and available in real-time.

Agent Tools

The tools agents have available to them are imperative in their ability to provide excellent customer experience. The best solution is an all-encompassing desktop that simplifies and unifies everything for agents. It should include productivity and team collaboration tools with quick access to knowledge and guidance.

The goal is to ensure contacts are routed to the right person while giving agents full visibility to the customer journey and context-data — across all channels. The best tools also come with easy navigation to multiple integrations and quick access to all the information agents need to provide an excellent customer experience.

Agents often need to perform the same tasks again and again — and they need to be quick, efficient, and accurate while doing so. The most successful contact centers will provide agents with the tools they need to not just do their jobs, but to do them well.

Channels

The last piece of the Omnichannel Contact Center framework for success is channels. To be successful, contact centers should build an expansion strategy that is both economical and consistent – while continuing to deliver great CX. This allows your organization to meet the expectation of being where your customers are, whether that’s through WhatsApp, email, web chat, social media, voice calls, or a multitude of other channels.

The key to successfully expanding channels is to account for the idiosyncrasies each individual channel will bring. For example, it may take longer to come to a resolution through email, though it provides many customers with convenience. It is also important to continue reporting data in a consistent way while accounting for each individual channel.

Businesses need to be able to provide a high level of service across any channel while measuring results in a consistent manner.

Use this framework to set your omnichannel contact center up for long-term success. Improve customer and employee satisfaction, operational efficiency and overall business outcomes. Make better, more informed decisions and let the data guide your path to success.