Advantages of Omnichannel Contact Center Solutions

Today, it’s not enough for contact centers to merely offer users a streamlined multi-channel experience. Giving customers access to voice, chat, email and self-service options is critical, but there is more to it than that. What makes a company’s customer contact center a real game-changer is the ability to deliver a synchronized omnichannel customer experience. An omnichannel contact center platform that records customer interactions from all channels−email, chat, voice, self-service, mobile channels, social media, etc.− and links data together, and can help business be more much more competitive. By synchronizing data synchronization and delivering omnichannel support, companies can improve the customer experience greatly while also boosting conversion rates and upsell opportunities. Let’s take a closer look at the biggest benefits of an omnichannel contact center:

1. Delivering a better customer experience- According to industry analysts, by the year 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. (Source: Walker). That means that regardless of the business, there’s a significant link between delivering an exceptional customer experience and increasing customer retention, satisfaction and sales.  An integrated omnichannel contact center makes this possible by facilitating real-time data sharing between people, CRM systems, data analytics and customer support applications. For example, with an omnichannel model, no matter how a customer starts or completes a customer service interaction, the information they provide is captured and accessible by the customer service agent. Let’s say a customer visits the company website and adds an item to their cart. Then, before they check out, they hit the ‘chat now’ button to ask a question about an add-on service.  With an omnichannel contact center solution, that customer’s order is recorded, and a customer service agent has access to that person’s loyalty number, order history, preferences, their product question and any other related customer data.
2. Take advantage of valuable ‘customer intelligence’- An omnichannel contact center strategy gives businesses the opportunity to gain much more insight into customers by capturing, analyzing, and archiving data collected from each customer interaction. That’s because structured and unstructured data sets can be collected, correlated and analyzed using BI and analytics platforms. Business and customer service agents can visualize the customer journey by looking at multiple points and building a 360-degree profile of customers. Then marketing, sales, and customer service can customize their messages and offer relevant and highly-targeted product and service recommendations using that buyer’s preferred channel. Consolidated data collection and data analytics makes it possible to display offers more intelligently on the website, email, search, call center and instore.
3. Delivering a consistent experience across all channels- A primary goal of an omnichannel strategy is to provide customers with a high-quality, consistent customer experience.  An omnichannel platform that supports real-time data sharing between agents, channels, and databases, makes it possible to deliver this consistent experience. This includes the brand look and feel, product availability and pricing and personalized responses. This could consist of a customer’s journey from a Facebook ad to a company website chatbot, or an SMS message that shares a location-specific promotion or order update. With a single-source of data and real-time information, an omnichannel contact center model can apply context-aware business logic and rules to determine the optimal action to take with the customer.

Overall, incorporating omnichannel solutions into the contact center has excellent potential to optimize sales and improve interactions with customers.  An omnichannel platform that allows real-time information sharing can help companies achieve these results as well as supercharge customer engagement, customer spend and brand loyalty.