Why Omnichannel in the Contact Centre Is Not a Done Deal

Travis Polland takes us through how to stay successful in the changing technology landscape, with specific focus on omnichannel.

The contact centre technology landscape is changing to reform old technologies in 2017. The ultimate goal is to seamlessly combine disparate systems and create an omnichannel experience, providing people with the ability to talk with a single agent across multiple interaction methods.

Not only is this utopian ideal expensive, however, but all these different systems don’t actually fit together as cleanly as intended.

Reduced Friction and Improved IVR Interactions

The current technology landscape is forcing enterprises to investigate new ways to improve the customer experience. The result we’re seeing is traditional enterprises are still falling back to multichannel solutions.

They are also investing in reducing the friction that people encounter when interacting with contact centres. For instance, IVRs are typically decision trees, but artificial intelligence is often introduced to add natural language interfaces to make interactions with customers easier.

Investments in Monitoring More Important for Omnichannel Contact Centres

Monitoring contact centre technology is even more important in today’s landscape than it was only five years ago. If a system goes down or doesn’t work as intended, it becomes detrimental to the overall customer experience.

When we look at the omnichannel contact centre approach, communication methods are being forced to work together even though they weren’t inherently designed with interoperability in mind.

These kinds of environments introduce many unknown unknowns, and they require diligent monitoring to maintain a positive, high-quality customer experience. Especially with natural speech IVRs or visual IVRs, monitoring ensures that interactions are moving through quickly and smoothly. The customer doesn’t need to hang up and call again, and their needs are addressed proactively.

What to Ask When an Omnichannel Contact Centre Is Struggling

Within a contact centre’s IT organisation, managers need to have a very good understanding of the intended customer experience. What should customers be able to accomplish before reaching an agent, and how are different channels working together in the case of omnichannel environments? Does the IT organisation have methods and measures in place not only to monitor, but also to manage experiences in a proactive manner?

When investigating third-party monitoring solutions, it’s key to have conversations that result in systems that support the enterprise’s overall plan.