The growth curve for voice-only contact centres will increasingly plateau as customers spread across more digital channels and expect their favourite brands to do the same. A fully functional omni-channel contact centre, unlike a call centre, will have a judicious channel mix, employ cross-channel agents, and use channel-blending-friendly technologies.
Let us map this transformation journey and the benefits it entails.
Transforming Your Call Centre: 4 Milestones
Initially, your call centre will focus on providing necessary support and responsiveness at optimal costs. The goal is to achieve service and cost-efficiency so that the customer feels satisfied. Relationships at this stage are mostly transactional, powered by voice as it is accessible to the widest cross-section of customers.
Once you have an operational call centre that is profitable, you should extend into email as the second-most popular channel. Customers across demographics want to switch between call and email seamlessly, so this is a good investment. At this stage, you can start to train agents in channel blending.
Here on, you can gradually add more channels to the mix including live chat, social media, intelligent automated assistance, and wearable apps. The goal is to build customer loyalty and stay connected over multiple channels, and interactions are more about engagement than transactional in nature.
In the final stage of transformation, you would aim to achieve a true omni-channel presence, where there is data continuity across channels to deliver a consistent and coherent customer journey. The goal is to provide a differentiated CX to convert customers into brand advocates, informed about your products, and able to add others to the funnel through social referrals.