by Joe Rabah, Managing Director for EMEA, RMG Networks
We are all familiar with contact centres; they are the places we call when we feel unhappy with, confused or annoyed by a brand, or when we need information about a product or service. Recently, technology has given us more ways than ever to contact these helpful people — even if those ‘people’ are sometimes robots — with the advent of chatbots, web chat and e-mail. Contact centres are becoming increasingly responsive with all channels covered, from telephone to email to social media just to name a few. Yes, most modern contact centres are truly multi-channel. Most of them, however, are not omni-channel — yet.
According to Trevor Butterworth of the UK Contact Centre Forum, “Many contact centre operators think they are providing an omni-channel service, but they’re not. As with the retail experience, the difference between multi- and omni channel lies in the degree of integration. At the moment, most contact centres will have a team to deal with social media, another team of agents to take phone calls, another team of agents to deal with e-mails and so on. But they won’t be able to pass details and enquiries across those formats, so they are multi-channel just as a shop that has a website and a retail premises and a social media site is multi-channel until all three are seamlessly integrated. Contact centres will only become omni-channel when conversations with customers are translated across formats according to the customer’s profile and needs and with all relevant information and background knowledge travelling with the enquiry.”
Read more...