What is an Omnichannel Contact Center?

An omnichannel cloud contact center is a customer service function that uses cloud-based contact center software to manage your customer interactions across multiple channels. These channels include phone, chat, email, text (SMS), and social media.

To ensure your customer journey is seamless, it's essential to communicate quickly and efficiently throughout. An omnichannel cloud contact center helps you with that. 

But what is an omnichannel cloud contact center? Read on, and find out.

Omnichannel contact center offers customer service through all channels like email, chat, social, phone, and web Omnichannel contact center offers customer service through all channels like email, chat, social, phone, and web

What is the difference between Multichannel and Omnichannel contact centers?

Multichannel Contact Center 

A multichannel contact center will manage multiple flows of your business communication. These may include email, phone, webchat, or social media platforms. However, these channels are dealt with individually and aren't linked to one another. Additionally, multichannel contact center agents perform better than their omnichannel counterparts on one channel but cannot switch seamlessly.

Omnichannel Contact Center

An omnichannel contact center supports multiple integrated communication channels including phone, chat, email, text (SMS), and social media. This enables agents to carry out customer interactions with a comprehensive view of previous conversations from other channels. In an omnichannel contact center, agents are skilled professionals, conversant in every channel's best practices, and familiar with the integrated customer data system (CDP).

Why Omnichannel contact center

Why is an Omnichannel Contact Center important for customer experience?

Customers find it incredibly frustrating when they are put on hold. However, if they can communicate with your business using chat, SMS, or social media, they can eliminate their waiting time. By using an omnichannel contact center, customer support agents will engage in multiple interactions simultaneously and track all customer communications in a single interface.

Keeping all this in mind, your omnichannel contact center offers a delicate combination of powerful technology, proactive agents, and winning features. Supporting customers to access information at any time, through any channel they prefer, from a device of their choice is crucial for maintaining a hassle-free customer experience. All in all, an omnichannel contact center creates a better customer experience, creating more loyal customers.

Here are some reasons that demonstrate the importance of an omnichannel contact center:

Omnichannel contact centers enable all agents to access the same data, making for a stable transition between channels. Customers will enjoy their freedom to communicate with your business through the channels they prefer in any order they wish without skipping a beat. This increases your operational efficiency and gives your customers the impression that they communicate to an efficient business, boosting your reputation.

Every business contact center has multiple departments ranging from sales, support, marketing, retention, etc. Omnichannel call centers must follow an orderly structure to be successful, which allows for efficient call routing every time a customer needs to be transferred between departments. 

One of the most efficient ways to build and implement a rigorous process for your agents is to ensure different digital tools like - chat, CRMs, and telecommunications are knitted tightly with hassle-free information exchange. A reliable omnichannel call center should work with platforms that are compatible with other leading tools. 

Omnichannel support will enable contact centers to collect customer data and interpret this data and make changes to improve user experience. This will have a significant impact on the success of your internal CX teams because they can boost answer rates and give your agents more opportunities to convert prospects into customers.

Best practices

Best practices for Omnichannel Contact Center

Every customer has distinct preferences, and they want to be serviced in ways suitable to them. Be it a startup that has just launched or a globe-spanning enterprise with offices in every continent, a VoIP phone number can serve them all equally well and in a better fashion than traditional phones.

Collect customer data across channels

Understand your customer behavior and collect data across your customer service platforms throughout their journey. Contact center metrics like - average response time, the number of calls to resolve problems, and average hold time will help you improve your customer service experience over time.

Streamline your Customer data

Organize the data from your omnichannel customer service platforms to address customer issues efficiently. By storing customer data in one online system, you can marrying all channels and streamline your customer journeys.

Enable customer support through mobile devices

Mobile devices are a popular channel for your customers to interact with your business, given their convenience.  Ensure that your omnichannel contact center platforms are easily accessible through mobile devices.

Use automation to boost agent productivity

AI-driven chatbots and social media auto-responders can drive human conversations and resolve multiple queries in real-time. Utilize data from all channels to identify complex issues and transfer them to live agents for personalized support.

How to create an omnichannel strategy?

Customers are not one-dimensional, so it's important to note that your customer engagement strategy shouldn't be either. Today's customers use at least five touch points when connecting with businesses, and they anticipate constant interactions across every channel.

Every omnichannel contact center must deliver a centralized and comprehensive customer experience across every customer's communication channel.

Understand your customer's journey

Customer journeys are a collection of interactions and touchpoints they go through before buying your products or services. Mapping this journey accurately by serving their needs will help you to personalize customer interactions.

Understanding how people experience your company will help you identify which communication channels they prefer, how they respond to your brand, and identify areas of improvement to help you boost customer retention.

 Unite your CX strategies

An omnichannel strategy entails operating in tandem with other teams such as CX, sales, and marketing. 

  • Brand Voice: Make sure your brand messaging and voice are consistent across all channels and teams. Come up with brand guidelines and ensure all your CX-facing teams are aware of them.

  • Customer service goals: It's essential to define your customer service KPI — average response time, ticket closure, average hold time or net retention, etc. Understand what success looks like to your business and always keep your company's overall KPIs and CX goals in mind.

Empower agents to be consistent across channels

Proper agent training is essential if you want your agents to achieve uniform messaging across channels. They must understand how to use an authentic tone that conveys compassion and compliance to listen. 

Plan weekly skills training to support your agents:

  • Knowledge transfer sessions on software and technology use

  • Understanding the subtleties of omnichannel interactions.

  • Conducting role-playing scenarios for the best customer service.

You should also include your agents while sketching your omnichannel engagement strategy. Ask for regular feedback about your contact center operations and methodologies. The more your agents believe they are at the heart of customer engagement, the more your initiative will succeed.

 Invest in the right CX software

With an abundance of omnichannel CX solutions out there, how to pick the best omnichannel contact center software for your business? Find out by asking these questions:

  • What problems should the software solve?

  • Which functions are essential to your team?

  • What are the frequent requests you receive from customers?

  • What's the implementation process like, and how long does it take to setup?

While there will invariably be a slight learning curve, CX technology should make the lives of agents and customers easier. Have that in mind before proceeding with all the bells and whistles upfront.

What to look for in an Omnichannel Contact Center?

Voice essentials

Be a global brand from a single location and ensure your customers receive the same personal touch as a local partner. Buy local phone numbers for your cloud contact center in 90+ countries. Provide exceptional voice service with an intuitive, all-in-one contact center solution.

Mobile App

Make and receive calls, create and transfer notes, access call logs, and call summary - all these with the convenience of the contact center app. Collaborate with teammates on their mobile phones or tablets and create 'WOW' moments for your customers.

ACD System

Ensure your calls are routed to the available agents in the shortest possible time. Delight your customers with fast responses and increase your contact center's operational efficiency.  Identify premium customers based on calling number and connect them in less than 3 rings.

Easy integrations

Enhance your contact center's existing ecosystem by seamlessly integrating with the apps you use. Maximize your agent productivity and engage in contextual conversations. Bring together all your existing apps to provide an unforgettable customer experience. 
 

Reporting and analytics

Metrics that matter visualized and presented in an intuitive, easy-to-consume manner. Spot call trends, volume trends to ideate and launch remedial measures and keep your customer experience outstanding.  Look for anomalies in the data and make appropriate improvements in your processes. 

Workforce management

Manage your call center by utilizing the live dashboard. Analyze your dashboard to implement the best call center management practices and optimize your call center performance. Supervise your phone teams in real-time and maintain the quality of conversations and optimize operations easily.

Freshdesk CONTACT CENTER

Introducing, Freshcaller

The omnichannel contact center that can help your business deliver delightful customer experiences.

Freshcaller is a cloud-based all-in-one Omnichannel contact center solution.

You can buy local, toll-free, or vanity numbers to support a virtual global presence for your business. Freshcaller provides you with more functionality at a significantly lower price than your traditional landlines. You will improve your agents' productivity and provide a better experience to your customers with this Omnichannel contact center solution.

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