Harnessing omnichannel presence for the ideal customer service strategy

The shift in channels for consumer engagement and communication has become more pronounced than ever. Digital disruption is changing the way people communicate in their personal lives. Messaging tools like WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook Messenger have grown significantly in adoption globally, and this number continues to accelerate. Brands are responding by cultivating a presence on these B2C communication channels - from Facebook Messenger and Google My Business to Apple Business Chat. This development is changing consumer expectations: they now want to communicate with brands on messaging tools and apps at their own convenience.

Consumer expectations today

• Service at their fingertips: Consumers, especially younger generations, increasingly want to engage and communicate with brands in the same way they reach out to friends and family on apps like WhatsApp or Snapchat. This means organisations must be accessible where customers are most likely to make contact: their smartphones.
• Know their context: Have you ever called a customer service line, entered your account number, passed through the IVR, authenticated yourself, and finally connected with an associate, only to be asked 'How may I help you today?' - as if none of the previous steps happened? Information provided at each step is rarely shared with associates or used to resolve the issue at hand. After going through the IVR process, the customer has to articulate their issue from scratch, leading to a negative experience.
• Service at their own pace: Consumers do not like waiting for a response, but the expectation in a messaging context is slightly different. Everyone is constantly multi-tasking. While texting friends, one does not expect an instant response - as long as there is assurance of a reply within a reasonable time. The same applies to customer service interactions. Once an assurance is provided, a consumer typically moves on and periodically checks back.
• Services based on preferences: Customers are accustomed to experiences like Amazon product recommendations and Uber ride matching - both based on thorough analysis of past choices. This has become the new normal. Customers expect enterprises to understand them and anticipate their needs. Any brand that chooses not to do so runs the risk of conveying that it does not care about its customers.

To deliver on these expectations, customer management organisations need to re-align to a service strategy built on omnichannel platforms. This strategy should identify customer segments, predict volume drivers, and offer channels of service that customers will most likely use. Before exploring an omnichannel example, it is worth defining the term: an omnichannel experience is a multi-channel approach to marketing, selling, and serving customers in a way that creates an integrated and cohesive customer experience no matter how or where a customer reaches out.

Offering customers service at their fingertips

In 2017, one of the UK's largest telecom and media providers noticed that its customers' channel preferences were changing rapidly. The voice channel was expensive and inadequate for resolving several customer issues. For instance, customers would spend nearly 10 minutes on the phone just to find out what a specific charge on their account was for. The organisation partnered with its BPM and messaging platform providers to become an early mover in introducing a channel shift targeting inbound calls on its IVR.

The organisation identified the best-suited contact types for messaging and offered customers on the IVR the option to move to SMS or Facebook Messenger instead of waiting on hold. Next, it addressed customer authentication. To resolve security concerns, the company introduced a verification solution that allowed customers to authenticate themselves over SMS and Facebook Messenger, creating a secure connection with the assistance of the customer service team.

Following the success of the IVR deflection, the company launched in-app messaging across iOS and Android platforms. Customers are now able to start Facebook Messenger and SMS conversations directly from the website, precisely from where they left off on their mobile devices. This approach has steadily replaced traditional web chat channels.

Within 12 weeks, the company had 1,200 contact centre associates handling messaging. 30 percent of uncontained contacts on the IVR moved to messaging. Messaging proved far more efficient than the traditional voice-based approach: a single customer service executive can now handle six customers at a time. This led to 2.2 times efficiency over voice and a surge in customer satisfaction, now in the range of 80 to 90 percent.

Know the customer's context and offer services based on their preferences

A bank launching new products in quick succession had set up multiple contact centres across cities to cater to local customers in 10 different languages. Disparate systems in each contact centre, with limited customer understanding, were leading to a negative customer experience and rising costs. The bank tasked its BPM partner to consolidate its contact centres and technology solutions.

The BPM provider built a service strategy across channels and consolidated the contact centres in two locations to cater to customers across all languages. The strategy defined an omnichannel solution integrating IVR, inbound voice, email, web chat, outbound calling, and knowledge management. The solution offered a 360-degree integrated view of customer engagement across all contact centre channels. This resulted in:

• The ability to anticipate issues and improve customer experience with IVR traverse path optimisation.
• Reduction in average handling time (AHT) by 15 to 20 percent, with limited navigation to other systems.
• Improved customer context by integrating interaction history across channels.
• Next-in-line actions such as escalation alerts offered to associates to improve interactions.

The bank is also considering using analytics to service customers based on segmentation, customer lifecycle value, spend patterns, location, and emotional sentiment. Technology is defining how customers will be serviced in the future, and contact centres are best placed to leverage it for a true omnichannel experience.