There has been a rise in omnichannel contact centers over the past few years. Businesses have adopted integrated support channels, allowing customers to receive support via various touchpoints, reducing customer dissatisfaction and hold times.
Customers no longer stick to a single channel when contacting service agents. This has given rise to contact centers that handle customer support requests across multiple channels.
Companies that stick to a single channel are less likely to retain their customers than companies that offer omnichannel customer engagement. Customers tend to resort to multiple channels than stick to a single one.
According to a report by Hiver, only 77.33% of customers prefer email. The rest of the correspondents in the survey opted for different channels like live chat, phone, social media, and communities and forums.
In the report, it was also noticed that there was an overlap in certain responses. The overlap in channels implies that customers don’t rely on a single channel to resolve their requests.
Suggested Read: Would you like to know how Convin can help your Omnichannel contact center?
What are the Top Omnichannel Contact Center Trends of 2024?
There has been a lot of buzz around omnichannel contact centers, like integrating AI to boost performance and self-service channels, to name a few. Here are the top 4 contact center trends to keep an eye out for in 2024.
1. Personalized Customer Support
Customers prefer to avoid being kept on hold waiting for the support agent to find their customer details. A McKinsey report claims that 71% of consumers expect a personalized experience when they contact a contact center. The same report also found that companies that grow faster than their competitors drive 40% more revenue from personalized experiences than competitors with slower growth rates.
It is evident that a personalized experience increases customer satisfaction. But how do you bring about these experiences?
Contact centers should train agents to know the ins and outs of the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool used to store all customer information. An agent who knows how to navigate the CRM tool easily can help the customers without making them wait while fetching their data.
2. Consistent Service Among all Partners
Many brands tie up with partners to provide their customers with a 360-degree experience. The most prominent example is how brands from the tech industry partner with Amazon or other online retailers to sell their products.
It might seem like customers make a conscious difference between the service the brand offers and their partners. But that necessarily isn’t the case.
A Forrester report on shared customer experience states that a customer’s bad experience with a franchise or online retailer will be associated with the brand rather than the franchise or retail partner. A stellar customer experience calls for the brand and retail partners to always be on the same page.
So how do you ensure a consistent brand experience across franchises and retailers?
Retail partners and brands should keep updated CRM data available to each other. Tools like Convin can be integrated into your CRM to boost your contact center performance easily.
This implies that everyone interacting with the customer has the same data, irrespective of the interacted touchpoint. Such partnerships ensure that customers won’t be experiencing different service levels based on the channel they’re reaching out for support.
Consistent service among all partners interacting with the customer ensures every customer has a satisfactory experience.
3. Well-Maintained Forums and Communities
CXNetwork’s report on the global state of customer experience stated that 52% of customers preferred self-service channels. Some channels of self-service customer support include online forums/communities and FAQs about the product/service.
How do you ensure customers have a good experience in these channels?
Not all agents working in an omnichannel contact center must be working on the frontline replying to tickets generated on different support channels. Assigning a few agents to moderate and maintain official forums can provide a better experience to customers who prefer self-service channels.
Contact centers must be equipped and prepared to elevate the customer experience across all touchpoints, even if all customers don’t actively prefer them. A contact center becomes truly omnichannel when it can take on support requests through all available channels.
4. Efficient Usage of AI
Contact centers are also among the many industries facing questions about the relevance of their jobs with the introduction of AI tools like ChatGPT. It can seem normal to feel overwhelmed by the presence of a tool with such massive capabilities.
Instead of folding to such tools, contact centers should strive to use them to propel themselves ahead. There are a few ways in which AI can be leveraged to enhance the performance of omnichannel contact centers.
AI-enabled chatbots can help contact centers respond to customers faster in the long run. These chatbots act as the first point of contact and can solve simple customer problems without involving an agent.
In cases where the customer’s request is too complex for the AI to respond to, it can be transferred to an agent. The filtering gets better if the chatbot is equipped with predictive analysis. Each customer ticket can be assigned to the right agent based on responses to past tickets and the kind of query the customer has.
AI tools like Convin can perform call center audits to check all tickets coming through a contact center and identify areas for each agent to improve. These tools are trained with a vast sample size to analyze each ticket and flag issues if any. When deployed with the proper framework, they can also flag compliance issues.
Key Takeaways
In times when contact centers strive to give the best customer experience by utilizing all available channels, there should be a lookout for the latest customer trends and tools.
Here are the top omnichannel contact center trends to watch out for in 2024:
- Agents should be trained to navigate CRM databases to provide a personalized customer experience.
- Brands should collaborate with their retail partners to ensure that the customer experience isn’t affected by a change in the point of contact.
- Contact centers should maintain and moderate official forums or communities so customers can use self-service support if needed.
- Contact centers should leverage the power of AI instead of trying to outrun AI.
- AI-based tools like chatbots and auditing can be used to increase the overall performance of call centers.
Now that you know the top trends to keep an eye on, boost your omnichannel contact center performance immediately!
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