Digital Channel Checklist

Matt Dyer identifies six key factors that help to drive successful channel adoption.

1. A joined-up customer engagement strategy

All too often, contact centre owners and their digital counterparts don’t have a truly joined-up strategy backed by shared KPIs.

Decisions affecting the online journey don’t take account of the potential impact on the contact centre, or mobile apps are introduced that don’t take full advantage of embedded customer service options such as voice webchat, virtual agents and smart ‘contact us’ options. This invariably leads to unplanned and unnecessary customer demand levels into the contact centre.

Organisations also need to provide agents with an integrated view of contact histories across all channels, particularly as customers expect this kind of visibility. A poor performance here will have a direct impact on customer frustration.

2. Align with business goals

Organisations frequently trial new technology and channels because they’re easy to deploy and seem like a good idea.

However, these initiatives can often fail as they’re not aligned to specific business goals. Key steps here include linking digital channel deployments such as chat and social with core WFM platforms – avoiding incorrect staffing problems as channels take off quickly.

3. Contact centres and digital owners need to work together

Contact centres and digital owners need to work together to get a view on traffic on the website or mobile devices, and assess online drop-off on particular pages such as the Contact Us page. This will give a fair indication of potential traffic levels and the likely impact on voice.

Organisations also need to be smarter about how they address Grade of Service (GOS) situations. Often, as soon as GOS is impacted on voice, agents are taken off digital – which can lead to GOS issues on digital channels.

4. Take poor usability seriously

As developers don’t necessarily understand the cost and service impact of broken user journeys, poor usability can have an impact across the whole organisation.

Customers get particularly frustrated if they can’t complete the same transaction on different channels.

If you offer a service on voice, you should endeavour to offer the same experience on chat. If that’s not possible, make sure that your web content effectively communicates this to customers so that likely outcomes are clear from the start.

5. Optimise customer interaction points

It’s no use playing at digital, organisations have to focus on optimising customer interaction points.

Deploying text or speech analytics can play a key role in identifying issues with online journeys, allowing you to implement change quickly and change messaging and engagement strategy accordingly.

It’s also important to act on what customers are actually saying, as they provide the best barometer of where journeys are starting to break down.

6. Remove the fear of failure

It’s all too easy for organisations to get stuck in a mind-set where they’re not prepared to consider new technologies or new channels because of perceived timescales or the potential impact on existing customer service levels.

Here it’s worthwhile considering a ‘hot house’ approach – where a trial fast/fail fast mentality can be encouraged so that the organisation won’t get left behind.

For more information on this topic, download Sabio’s new eBook: Transforming Customer Contact – today’s customer service landscape.