Digital Channels Changing the Vendor Market

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Stephen Wright looks at what the future might hold for communications vendors as voice becomes just one of multiple mediums.

We are all happier to self-serve when dealing with organisations these days, and so non-voice channels like web, chat and email are becoming increasingly important. But in the long term does this shift herald a battle for domination of the contact centre between the traditional vendors and the enterprise resource planning (ERP)/customer relationship management (CRM) suppliers?

There’s always been a potential clash looming between the vendors of business process software (CRM/ERP) and the voice communications vendors. But up until now it has largely been a civilised meeting where information has been used by one system to inform the other. But things could be about to change.

Marketers bandy around words like omnichannel – but behind the marketing jargon, some real issues are emerging that may transform the market and alter who the major players are. As digital channels like email, chat, SMS and social media become commonplace, the key challenge is no longer to create a single task for an agent to deal with before moving on to the next.

Communications are now part of a process

Communications are now part of a process, often involving multiple channels. A customer investigates something by web, progresses to chat to resolve and then has a follow-up confirmation sent by email. Another might send an email and then follow up by phone to ask why there has been no response.

Moving the customer forward is THE key task and it’s not entirely clear that the vendors with the strongest voice communications heritage are in the best place to be the dominant suppliers – as voice becomes just one of multiple communications mediums.

Customers are becoming ever more self-sufficient – able to find what they want on the web, happy to self-serve and indulge in webchat. What is critical is making sure that the customers, and the agents who help them, have the right information at the right time to move the interaction forward. Good customer experience is about data, information and process, and this is the stuff of CRM and ERP vendors, not communications vendors.

The market has started to learn what multichannel contact centres need

Typically, applications are consolidated into larger suites of software after a period of experimentation shows the market what is really needed. The recent surge in webchat and social media has meant that the market has started to learn what multichannel contact centres need. It turns out that a customer experience supported by data, information and process is the way forward.

Stephen Wright

Stephen Wright

There are a number of non-voice software companies who offer advanced multichannel solutions but without the voice element. What is notable is that they are much more data and workflow oriented than their voice-based competitors – enabling interactions to reach a conclusion, rather than simply enabling the interaction to happen.

It is not all cut and dried, of course, the voice vendors do offer integration toolkits too. But with ERP/CRM vendors like SAP in the visionary quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for contact centres – Oracle selling a full digital multichannel contact centre solution with comprehensive knowledge management, and CRM vendor Microsoft entering the voice market – the game may well be changing.

The interesting question will be ‘how does voice fit in to the omnichannel world?’, rather than ‘how do the digital multichannels fit in with the voice vendors who have traditionally been the big contact centre players?

With thanks to Stephen Wright at Azzurri Communications

Author: Megan Jones

Published On: 26th Aug 2015 - Last modified: 18th Dec 2018
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