4 Best Practices for a Magnificent Multichannel Contact Centre

How to meet or exceed customers’ expectations for a truly seamless multichannel contact centre environment.

In an environment in which the vast majority of contact centres are offering some semblance of a multichannel environment, merely offering social media service or email options isn’t enough to set your contact centre apart from the competition.

According to research from Call Center IQ, 88 percent of contact centres are now offering a multichannel experience. So how do you differentiate your client service centre and leverage a seamless service experience to position your team as the leader within your industry?

To stand out from the crowd, consider investing in these four multichannel contact centre best practices in order to rise to the challenges posed by a competitive field.

1. Take Telephone Service to the Next Level

Before you can make a play for multichannel mastery, you must first make sure that the guiding force behind any successful client service centre – telephone service – is operating at peak performance. Take a look at your telephone service metrics – especially those measuring hold times, service levels and first contact resolution – and be sure you’re adequately staffed and prepared to offer first-class phone service. Adding other channels without first mastering telephone service is a recipe for disaster.

2. Work on Workforce Management for the Multichannel Environment

Smart contact centre managers know efficiency is king. For that reason, it’s important to be able to schedule effectively for the multichannel environment, a task that is undoubtedly more complex that scheduling for an entirely telephone-based operation. Your current workforce management software and formulas are likely based on call volume, which makes them irrelevant and inadequate for effectively scheduling in-house agents to deal with email, social media, and web chat inquiries. You may consider cross-training agents to work on a number of channels or even bringing in a third-party contact centre support solution to help you provide seamless service at any time of the day or night and on any of your multiple service channels.

3. Focus on Your Customers’ Preferred Channels

A multichannel mindset is only effective when it’s undertaken with care. Simply declaring your contact centre to be multichannel by adding on a number of different contact routes isn’t especially effective. Be sure to focus on those channels that customers in your particular industry (and specific business) prefer. Research from Forrester found that live assist channels have the highest rates of customer satisfaction, with live telephone voice assistance still ranking highest (69 percent satisfaction rate) and chat in second place at 63 percent. Newer channels such as Twitter do not perform as well, ranking at only 56 percent customer satisfaction. Does that mean you avoid Twitter? Definitely not. But it does mean that going multichannel can’t mean you neglect your bread-and-butter channels and end up providing a less-than-satisfying customer experience.

4. Seek a Seamless Service Experience Across All Channels

The term “omnichannel” can be used a couple of different ways: to describe a contact centre that only offers one contact route (i.e., exclusively telephone service) or to refer to a truly unified customer service experience in which customers can resolve their inquiries through a number of different channels without service being interrupted at any link in the chain. In order to be a top-performing multichannel contact centre, it’s important to invest in a creating a seamless experience in which inquiries that begin in one channel (Twitter, for instance) can be resolved or updated later via telephone, live chat, or email. Customers who are accustomed to integrated experiences in which they can swipe, tap, and click their way to resolving issues online will appreciate the holistic approach to customer service offered by a multichannel contact centre offering an all-encompassing “omnichannel” service experience.

Any contact centre can add another channel and claim to offer multichannel customer service. Only the truly masterful contact centre manager can create a fully integrated multichannel approach that satisfies customers’ desires for a stress-free experience. For more information on how to create a thriving contact centre no matter how many channels you’re operating in, check out our free white paper.