While the crafting of low-effort customer journeys and the optimisation of true omnichannel self-service architectures are the focus of significant strategic thinking and deployment, there are strong indicators that many organisations lack the maturity of their ‘digitization strategies’ and as such, they are, in fact, still tending to develop and deploy somewhat disparate multichannel solutions.
One of the several tragic consequences of the typical multichannel approach is that such operations are not able to take full advantage of omnichannel analytics nor the ability to glean incredibly powerful business intelligence from more appropriate platforms.
Some of today’s more sophisticated omnichannel platforms also deliver advanced intelligent routing and process automation across all channels. This means that the organization can build an intelligent record of individual customer channel preferences and behaviors and in many instances, will be able to pre-empt their needs while simultaneously providing high levels of appropriate and relevant personalisation.
Such personalisation could, for example, be by way of automated chat pop-ups, emailed notes or documents or, for that matter, prepared text or audio or video responses directed through the customer’s preferred social channel. Alternatively, the customer could be directed via the voice channel to the best trained or equipped agent or in some cases, to the same agent that he or she has successfully interacted with previously.
By digitally engaging with customers (assuming an appropriate omnichannel platform) it is now possible to identify many of an individual customer’s traits, preferences, characteristics and intent. Armed with this type of information the system can effectively route the interaction to the most appropriate channel and put forward just the right digital content.
Significantly reduced customer effort linked to high levels of appropriate personalisation all add up to a vastly improved customer experience and a greater depth of customer engagement. Engaged customers are infinitely more loyal; they purchase more, stay longer and rerefer more. Engaged customers are an organization’s true advocates.
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1 Dimension Data’s 2016 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report © Dimension Data 2013-2016