There’s lots of talk these days about omnichannel customer service, or omnichannel customer engagement. What this industry jargon term actually means is something pretty simple.
Essentially, it means that your customer is able to access your product or service no matter where they are - on their mobile devices, on your website, on your social media profile, or in your physical store or location.
But there’s another important facet of omnichannel. In addition to covering all the different channels through which a customer can interact with your brand, it also takes into account interactions that happen between channels.
For example, that could mean a customer who calls your contact center to set up a new account, then decides to finish the process at one of your physical locations instead.
While many brands are working hard to ensure that their online services are truly omnichannel, sometimes the physical locations end up getting left out of the loop. This means that the employees who deal with your customers face-to-face may be less able to help them than one of your contact center agents.
This can be a costly mistake. The last thing you want is for a customer to take the time to visit your store, then realize they can get a better customer service experience online.
So how do you make sure that your customer engagement is seamless across the virtual and physical worlds? How do you make sure you are truly an omnichannel brand?
One of the most important aspects of an omnichannel customer experience is that the transition from one method to another is smooth and efficient.
If you’re shopping on your phone and put something in your cart, that item should still be there when you go to complete the purchase hours later on your desktop.
Likewise, if you started a customer service inquiry on the phone but had to hang up before it was resolved, you should be able to go finish it in a bricks-and-mortar store, with an employee who can access your account and see your interactions.
This necessitates that the employee who is working with you face-to-face has access to the very same information as the one whom you talked with on the phone.
This can seem like a tricky thing to manage, but it’s quite possible with the right software. Employee desktop software that allows for access across channels can help you give all your employees, both at the contact center and in your physical locations, what they need to be successful.
The other element of a good omnichannel customer experience is to have a robust knowledge management, or KM, system in place. Having resources like articles, how-tos, and more at your employees’ fingertips is vital for good customer service at the contact center.
However, it’s just as important that your employees in your bricks-and-mortar locations have this as well. In fact, it doesn’t hurt to make your knowledge base - or at least, parts of it - available to your customers through your website. In this age of self-service, there’s less and less need to hide resources behind your company walls - especially since it makes not just your customers, but your employees happier, too.
Managers tasked with scheduling, arranging training, gathering employee feedback, etc. spend enough time behind a computer. By streamlining these administrative, time-heavy tasks, they can gain more time for coaching and engaging with their employees - whether those are in a contact center or at a branch location.
Selecting a workforce optimization software solution that works across an enterprise, from the back office, to the contact center, to branch locations and more, is vital.
With this kind of multifaceted system, like the Verint Media Recorder Workforce Optimization suite, managers can see the entire big picture of the business. This allows them to schedule more appropriately and make better business decisions.
For more on how omnichannel customer engagement can help your contact center and business at large, read our blog post “The Future of the Contact Center.”
