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In the realm of customer service, your support staff is often your first line of interaction with a customer. Whether a customer needs a return, has a question about changing their shipping date, or is troubleshooting a specific feature of your product, your customer service team will likely be the ones to handle their request. As a result, it’s imperative that you are always looking for ways to improve your customer engagement and customer service. Using an omni-channel call center software solution is one way to really boost how your customers interact with your support agents. Here are just some of the reasons to consider implementing an omni-channel platform into your customer service strategy.
More engaged customers
An omni-channel approach, as the name suggests, uses multiple channels in order to engage with customers. This could be through analog technologies like the phone as well as newer, digital technologies such as SMS messaging, email, and live web chats. Some businesses even choose to utilize screen sharing or live video in their omni-channel mix. All of these different channels and platforms are designed to better engage with customers and meet them where they are.
For example, if your support service window is between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. and someone needs support while they’re at their day job, it can be difficult to find time to get the help they need. After all, nobody wants to be on hold dealing with a service issue during their lunch break. If you have other options of contact, like SMS or email, your customer is far more likely to engage and get their questions answered and less likely to be irritated. With omni-channel platforms in which multiple methods of connecting are synchronized, you’re providing service to customers you may not have even known you had otherwise.
When you can reach a wider subsection or demographic of your audience, you’ll be able to gain better insights into other aspects of your business, too. Marketing teams, especially, can leverage this data, since not only will you have better information about purchase behavior, but you’ll also have a better idea what platforms are best to reach various consumers through. If younger customers who primarily buy shoes from your company are most engaged via SMS or Facebook Messenger, you’ll likely want to only serve ads to them on mobile platforms or Facebook. This continues to improve how and where you’re engaging with customers in a more personalized way.
Productivity improves satisfaction
Beyond reaching a wider subset of your customers, an omni-channel approach also enables your agents to work more efficiently. One reason for this is the fact that an omni-channel call center software uses a single, unified dashboard. This helps your agents reference all of the information they might need to handle a customer’s request in one spot. From previous support requests to purchase history and customer value, the relevant info can easily be accessed and drawn from your CRM platform without having to change windows. Thus productivity goes up. When your agents perform better, customer satisfaction goes up, since their requests are handled more accurately and efficiently. Time and again, speed is a key factor in how satisfied customers are with their service interaction, so faster processing goes a long way in making your customers happier.
From creating more engaged customers to providing better information for you to strengthen your marketing efforts, there are many ways that an omni-channel call center platform can help grow your business while improving customer service. If you’re interested in learning more about a specific platform, it’s never a bad idea to reach out to the developer to request more whitepages about their software or even a live demo. From there, you can determine which solution makes the most sense for your business’ needs, and begin to improve your customer service in a variety of ways.
Call center stock photo by Bojan Milinkov/Shutterstock
