According to the CX Today report, consumers use more than six touchpoints to connect with a brand and 72% of them expect the brand to know their purchase history and provide quick support (Source). These statistical results prove two important things. One is your business needs to implement omnichannel communication and another is your business must have data of all customer interactions through any communication channel in a single place. This is possible by using an omnichannel call center software solution.
The simplest reason to use a call center omnichannel software solution is already shared with you at the beginning of this blog post. Still, if you are wondering whether to invest in it or not, then read on because we will share all the major reasons in detail to use the best omnichannel call center software.
1) What is an Omnichannel Call Center Solution?
2) How Does Transformation Happen in This Software?
3) What are the Major Reasons to Use an Omnichannel Solution?
4) Concluding notes
Let’s explore each of these points in detail to comprehend the necessity of using an omnichannel contact center solution.
1. What is An Omnichannel Call Center Solution?
Any business that focuses on delivering a unified customer experience must implement a streamlined system in place that can help in logging all customer interactions and projects to agents during or after a live call with the customer. An omnichannel solution has a mechanism to integrate all communication channels within a call center solution and map interactions of customers via diverse channels in this software to showcase as a single customer engagement. That means a system that supports unified communication channels within a single solution is called an omnichannel contact center software solution.
2. How Does Call Center Software Transform over the Years?
Traditionally, a call center system is used to provide only voice call support along with a few limited features like auto attendant of the call. Gradually, more features got added to this solution to provide advanced communication features so customer calls could be handled with more efficiency. However, the system is used to support only voice calling. As the number of communication channels started increasing and became cheaper enough to be used by any individual, the stiff demand to add those communication channels into the software increased. In fact, the time came when even if the software did not have any mechanism to support multiple communication channels, customers were still trying to reach business through different modes of communication. This need became the mother of call center omnichannel software.
As business needs are shaping, more and more inventions are taking place in this industry. For example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an important driving factor in this industry. It provides features like a chatbot, conversational AI, voice assistance, voice analysis, emotion analysis, speech to text, fraud detection, and more. It means several amazing innovations are taking place in this industry and transforming this software drastically to become better and more efficient.
3. What Are The Major Reasons to Use an Omnichannel Solution?
An omnichannel call center software solution has become a necessary system in this industry. Even if you don’t want to invest in technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, you have to invest in a unified communication platform for multiple reasons.
Let’s explore the major reasons to use this software for your business or call center.
Become a client centric brand
The world of digitization and diversity is here. Regardless of the fact that your call center is providing support across all popular modes of communication or not, your customers will reach out to your brand via their preferred channels. Moreover, they are likely to use multiple communication channels at different stages of interaction to connect with a customer support center and expect agents to have a hint of all conversations he or she had via different communication channels. If your customer care center does not have all communication channels in your software for call centers, then you will add up to the frustration level of your clients. You will be forcing clients to use your preferred channels of communication. This makes your call center business centric instead of client centric.
Also Read : Omnichannel Contact Center: Best Practices to Deliver Exceptional CX
By using an omnichannel solution, you will be able to provide customer care services across unified communication channels and delight your clients. You will prove to be a client centric brand that gives flexibility to customers to choose their preferred communication channel.
Streamline conversations
Many call centers use a simple call center solution instead of omnichannel to provide customer care services, but they fail to deliver reliable services. The reason is they use other communication channels separately. For example, they use WhatsApp web to provide support via WhatsApp and the call center system to provide support via voice calls. This increases complexity for agents as they need to manage multiple communication channels. Moreover, it becomes quite difficult for them to manage different communication channels and find interactions with clients across these platforms. An omnichannel software solution helps in streamlining conversations. It will not only log all conversations, but it will also help in showing all these interactions in a chain, so agents will have all engagements during a live call, so agents can provide the best customer support.
Reduce call handling and call hold time
When agents have all the information and interactions in front of them, they will be able to provide quicker responses to customers. They will not need to skim different communication channels and platforms to find different interactions. This will make response time faster and help in reducing average call hold time and call handling time. It will also increase various other KPIs related to customer satisfaction.
Automate Customer Care Jobs
The best omnichannel call center software not just helps in delivering jaw dropping customer care services across different communication channels, but it also helps in achieving higher productivity. It provides an array of advanced features to speed up several operations, reduce manual jobs, and increase efficiency. Different automation features are available in this software. Some of them help customers to receive resolution to their queries without waiting for agents to intervene and resolve their concerns. Automating customer care jobs creates a win-win situation because it helps in resolving client concerns automatically. By keeping agents available, more customer cases can be resolved within a minimum or limited time, improving customer satisfaction.
Simplify Cross Team Collaboration
In any call center, cross-team collaboration is an important task, and an omnichannel contact center solution can efficiently handle it. It provides complete customer interaction to all teams, so agents will have details of past conversations that happened with other teams. This feature also helps in conducting conference calls with multiple team members from different departments or transferring calls to any other department as and when needed to provide the required support for clients. For example, if a customer had purchased something with claims made by the sales team and the customer is referring to those claims with the customer care agent, then that agent will have the details of claims made by the sales team in the software.
This will help agents to use that information to provide better resolution for the client without concerning someone from the sales team. If there is any dispute, then the customer care agent can also take the sales rep on the conference call and get a satisfactory resolution for the customer.
Also Read : Best Practices to Follow in an Omni Channel Call Center
Better Utilize Resources
The omnichannel contact center software also helps in improving resource utilization. In any call center, manpower is the most critical and expensive resource. This software will save time for agents by automating several jobs and providing vital information within a single screen. This helps agents perform with higher efficiency and productivity. Additionally, a single screen with multiple solution features within it will help in improving the accuracy of operations and reduce expenses. The saved resources can be used to serve more clients.
4. Concluding Notes
Implementing unified communication is no longer an option for businesses. Businesses and call centers need omnichannel software for unified communication and collaboration. This helps call centers to meet the modern day customer demands. Moreover, it saves a lot of resources to be used to handle more calls or interactions. This helps in maximizing results with the same number of agents. More reasons to use omnichannel software in your business.
Along with getting the best software with omnichannel communication, you must also follow the best practices to maximize returns. You must read our blog post sharing the best practices of using this solution, here.
Your search for top-notch omnichannel call center software ends here! iCallify is one of the most regarded solutions with omnichannel communication support. Let us give a live demo of this software and explain how it can help your business. To schedule a demo, please contact us.
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