Omnichannel Contact Center: From Silos to Synergy – Redefining CX

In this era of heightened customer expectations, a seamless CX empowers businesses to outshine their rivals and gain a distinct competitive edge. Optimum CX strategy goes beyond mere product features or price points. It rather positions the customer at the heart of every engagement. By understanding customers’ preferences, anticipating their needs, and exceeding their expectations, organizations can forge an emotional connection that fosters unwavering loyalty.

The shift from a fragmented, siloed customer service approach to a truly integrated omnichannel strategy is pivotal in realizing an enhanced CX. This blog will explore the meaning of omnichannel contact centers and how they contribute to a superior customer experience. Let’s dive in!

Key Takeaways

• A seamless customer experience empowers businesses to gain a competitive edge by focusing on customer preferences and exceeding expectations. A customer-centric approach positions the customer at the heart of every engagement, fostering unwavering loyalty.
• Shifting from siloed customer service to an integrated omnichannel strategy is pivotal for enhancing customer experience. Omnichannel strategies focus on connecting communication channels and centralizing customer interactions. This is in line with customer expectations, as 38% of consumers expect agents to have the entire context of their queries.
• Siloed contact centers lead to inconsistencies in customer experience and fragmented information. Duplication of efforts, lack of unified customer data, and limited cross-departmental knowledge sharing pose challenges.
• Holistic customer insights enable personalized and context-rich interactions, leading to higher satisfaction. Increased convenience, improved agent productivity, and consistent branding contribute to the preference for omnichannel centers. Companies with the best omnichannel customer engagement strategies turn 89% of buyers into loyal customers. By following best practices, businesses can truly position the customer at the center of every interaction.
• Exotel’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform offers seamless customer support through multiple channels. The platform provides a 360° view of customer profiles, enabling agents to enhance customer experiences.

Understanding Omnichannel Contact Centers

Omnichannel contact centers are customer service and communication systems that provide seamless and integrated interactions across various communication channels. An omnichannel approach aims to offer customers a consistent and personalized experience, regardless of the channel they use to interact with an organization.

Traditional call centers used to focus primarily on handling voice calls. However, with the proliferation of digital communication channels such as email, chat, social media, SMS, and more, customers now expect to engage with companies through their preferred channels.

Omnichannel contact center go beyond just offering multiple channels; they ensure that these channels are interconnected and that customer information is shared. This allows customers to start interacting on one channel and transition to another without repeating information.

Challenges of Siloed Contact Centers

Siloed contact centers refer to the organizational setup where customer communication channels and departments operate independently, leading to several challenges. They are discussed below:

✓ Inconsistent Customer Experience

With different teams handling distinct communication channels like phone, email, chat, and social media, there is a risk of inconsistent information and disjointed customer experiences. Customers may need to repeat their issues when switching channels, causing frustration and impacting overall satisfaction.

✓ Lack of Unified Customer Data

When contact center data is fragmented across different silos, having a holistic view of customer interactions and preferences becomes difficult. This lack of integrated customer data makes it challenging to personalize interactions.

✓ Limited Cross-Departmental Knowledge Sharing

Each department within a siloed structure might possess unique insights or expertise that could benefit other departments. Without proper communication channels, these valuable insights might go untapped. For instance, siloed departments might not effectively share customer insights, preventing targeted cross-selling or upselling efforts that could enhance revenue generation.

✓ Duplication of Efforts

Different contact center teams may duplicate efforts by independently addressing the same customer inquiries. This wastes resources and can lead to conflicting information being provided to customers.

✓ Higher Operational Costs

Maintaining multiple separate contact centers requires redundant resources, such as technology, staff, training, and management. Consolidating these resources into a unified structure could lead to cost savings.

How are Omnichannel Contact Centers Transforming CX from Silos to Synergy?

Omnichannel contact centers represent a transformative approach to customer experience (CX). They break down silos between communication channels, departments, and customer data. These platforms use cloud-based contact center software to connect various communication channels like phone, email, chat, social media, and more. This ensures that conversations across channels and timelines are available in one place. 

Omnichannel centers also provide a single, holistic view of the customer’s interactions. They collect data from all channels, providing valuable insights into customer behavior and trends. Using this data, businesses can make informed decisions to optimize CX strategies and address pain points. This approach creates synergy by offering a connected, personalized, and efficient experience that meets the evolving expectations of today’s consumers.

Along their journey, if the customers feel that a particular channel is not suiting their needs, they can shift to another one. They don’t have to worry about starting the complaint ticket again. This particular feature differentiates omnichannel contact centers from multichannel centers. 

Though multichannel centers also offer various channels to customers, they don’t allow the conversations to be synced. Thus, customers must explain their problems from scratch whenever they switch channels.

For instance, if a customer reaches out to a support agent via Facebook messenger, they may be routed to a live agent for further assistance. In the case of a multichannel approach, the live agent will have no context of the conversation that happened via Facebook. But, in the case of an omnichannel approach, the customer can continue from where they left off, as agents will have access to past interactions through a centralized dashboard.

 Moreover, through advanced routing capabilities, omnichannel centers allow the distribution of queries to the appropriate agents. This leads to human resource optimization and provides specialist support to customers. Omnichannel centers are thus a win-win for both organizations and customers. The benefits continue. Read ahead to learn more about such benefits in the section below.

Benefits of Redefining CX with Omnichannel Contact Centers

Omnichannel strategies inherently focus on customer needs, fostering a customer-centric organizational culture. They help organizations stand out in the market by attracting and retaining customers. Companies that employ omnichannel strategies have a 23 times higher customer satisfaction rate. The following benefits set omnichannel centers apart:

i) Holisitic Customer Insights

By consolidating data from various channels, omnichannel systems offer a comprehensive view of customer interactions, preferences, and history. Agents can thus create and understand a cohesive customer journey, which is considered important by 86% of senior-level marketers. This allows for personalized and context-rich interactions. As agents can quickly access previous interactions and customer data, they can offer faster and more accurate responses to inquiries.

ii) Increased Convenience

Omnichannel support allows customers to choose their preferred communication method, enhancing convenience and meeting customer requirements. It also gives customers a sense of empowerment by facilitating self-service options. Moreover, by doing away with the need to repeat information, it reduces customer efforts and results in higher satisfaction.

iii) Improved Agent Productivity

Omnichannel systems streamline agent workflows, enabling them to handle interactions from different channels within a single interface. No agent feels overburdened because the workload is evenly distributed across different channels and teams. This results in improved productivity and employee satisfaction. Moreover, omnichannel centers provide in-depth reporting and analytics, which aids in measuring agent performance and identifying training needs.

iv) Consistent Branding

Customer service interactions influence the overall perception of customers about a brand. A lack of consistency in how queries are approached and resolved may reduce customer trust. Omnichannel centers avoid this predicament by ensuring that conversations are synced, and brand messaging and tone remain consistent. This reinforces the brand image and identity.

Best Practices for Implementing an Omnichannel Approach

Implementing an omnichannel contact center involves careful planning and execution to ensure an effective customer experience. Here are some best practices to consider:

a) Start with a Clear Strategy

• Define your goals and objectives for implementing an omnichannel center.
• Understand your customers’ preferences and communication habits across various channels to develop a suitable strategy.

b) Choose the Right Technology

• Select a robust contact center platform that can integrate with your existing systems.
• Ensure that customer profiles are updated in real-time to provide agents with accurate information.

c) Agent Training and Skill Development

• Communicate the implementation plan and its benefits to all stakeholders within the organization.
• Provide comprehensive training to agents to equip them with the skills needed to handle interactions across various channels.
• Focus on empathy, problem-solving, and adapting communication styles to different channels.

d) Real Time Analytics and Reporting

• Implement analytics tools to track customer interactions and gather insights on agent performance.
• Monitor key metrics such as response times, customer satisfaction, and channel usage to identify areas for improvement.

e) Cross Functional Collaboration

• Foster collaboration between departments and teams to enable seamless issue resolution.
• Implement processes for transferring information and cases between teams without friction.

f) Agile Adaption

• Stay updated on emerging communication channels and customer preferences.
• Be prepared to integrate new channels and technologies as they become relevant to your customer base.

g) Data Security and Compliance

• Ensure that you store customer data as per the relevant regulations.
• Implement strong data protection measures to safeguard sensitive information.

Overcoming Challenges in the Transition- Exotel to the Rescue

With Exotel’s omnichannel contact center solution, businesses can offer customer support via inbound calls, outbound calls, WhatsApp, SMS, video conferencing, and live chat from one user-friendly interface. Providing a 360° view of the customer profile, our contact center solution allows agents to redefine customer experience to achieve unrivaled levels of satisfaction.

Exotel’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform is easy to set up and can be scaled as per evolving business needs. Moreover, it can be integrated into your existing CRM/helpdesk systems and messaging platforms. By centralizing customer data and analytics, agents gain insights to deliver personalized support, creating a lasting emotional connection with customers.

Learn more about our solutions and how we can help you better serve your customers #LikeAFriend.