Omni-Channel Customer Service Experience

Customers now expect to receive service from your organization on the channel of their choice, which might be voice, email, SMS/text, web, mobile or social media. Companies are beginning to provide service on all of these channels – but too often, those channels may exist in silos. This multi-channel service can be taken to the next level with an omni-channel solution that integrates channels to provide a consistent customer experience.

Customers don’t think in terms of channels – they think in terms of finding an answer to their question or a solution to their problem. They may reach out to your contact center via voice, your mobile website or over a social media channel like Twitter. As more consumers adopt mobile devices, the lines between channels can blur – and customer expectations for ease of starting a support conversation in one channel, then continuing in another, become even higher.

Where multi-channel self-service may have served the customer on more than one channel, it may not have integrated those channels; for example, a bank customer might be able to check their account balance, and transfer funds via text message in a dialog very similar to how they would perform the same tasks via IVR or mobile web.

Omni-channel self-service empowers the customer to start a customer support activity in one channel, and seamlessly transition to another. A conversation that begins on Twitter can be continued via text message or phone call with all of the relevant context preserved across channels. Omni-channel solutions don’t require implementing every possible channel – for example, after a survey of customer preferences, a business may choose to offer voice, SMS and social media as service channels – but an omni-channel solution ensures the service level, responsiveness, and quality of service received on individual channels and across channels would be equally high.

Omni-channel capabilities are particularly relevant in the mobile context – the mobile customer is used to carrying on dialogs via text, voice, social and instant-messaging channels, and having constant access to information. Currently, more than half of all mobile subscribers in the US own a smartphone and 80% of new mobile buyers opt for smartphones, according to Nielsen and Pew Research Center studies. When companies leverage and integrate these channels, the customer then has a seamless experience in the palm of their hand.

WHAT CAN ALVARIA DO:

Alvaria is the world leader in enterprise-scale customer experience (CX) and workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions. Our name is derived from Latin for “hives” – nature’s perfect form for millions of years – bringing you call center solutions that are scalable, resilient and secure, with efficiency, speed and pinpoint accuracy.