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It should be Customer Service 101. If consumers can buy a product at a company’s store location, on their website, or through the contact center, they should be able to expect the service they need regardless of the path they take. Yet they can’t, because many businesses don’t offer service consistently through all the various channels.

From the contact center’s standpoint in particular, customers on a global basis continue to choose the phone more than 60% of the time to contact a business for products and services. But industry studies show that, in some 90% of contact centers worldwide, email, chat, and web interactions are also solidly on customer preference lists. Moreover with technology having introduced mobile apps and channels like SMS texting and social networks to the business world, the customer experience is increasingly becoming a mobile one.

Focus on the customer relationship lifecycle, not just products

As technology has given consumers multiple new channels to interact with businesses, it has likewise changed their expectations of what the customer service experience should be. It’s surprising, then, that one of the biggest mistakes companies still make is to focus their service processes on products and not on the customer. To understand and manage the customer experience more effectively, companies in all sectors of business must do a better job in how they acquire, maintain, maximize, and retain customers. That is, to create loyal customers, businesses must first create processes that emphasize the customer relationship lifecycle:

1. Acquire. Focus processes on acquiring prospects and consumers via marketing channels, including social networks, with an equal focus on capturing the consumer’s interest in products and services.
2. Maintain. Create processes to manage consumer expectations and fulfill promises according to the characteristics of the products and services the consumer purchased. This includes quality of service, time waiting in the contact center, product warranties, problem resolution, satisfaction surveys, and so on.
3. Maximize. Devise up-selling and cross-selling processes to uncover opportunities to increase the wallet share of the consumer. This takes into consideration getting referrals and recommendations from consumers themselves.
4. Loyalty. Implement processes to increase the purchasing power of the consumer. Consider loyalty programs or similar incentives based who your best consumers are, who your frequent buyers are, and which customers are not your best customers.
5. Retain. Develop processes to prevent consumers from leaving (churn), or even processes to let the consumer go. The idea here is that processes for retention should be very minimal — assuming that the processes for maintaining and maximizing consumers are effective. Collection processes can also be part of the retention strategy.

The customer experience-multichannel strategy

With multichannel technology and consumer expectations in mind, a customer experience strategy must work together with processes that support the multichannel effort as a whole. This implies the need for analytics and business processes working together. For example, when a consumer has problems with a credit card statement, the person has several options:

1. Go to the website of the bank or financial institution for self-service,
2. Place a call to the contact center and get the balance via the IVR,
3. Send a text to the system to get the balance,
4. Access the balance using an iPhone (mobile) application,
5. Call the contact center and press 0 to speak with the operator, and finally,
6. Go to the branch location close to home or work.

If any of these interaction options don’t work in resolving the problem, the consumer might likely go to Facebook or Twitter to complain.

As demonstrated, the bank provides six (or more) channels to manage the relationship with the consumer. Some channels are low-cost, such as self-service, and others are more effective, such as the phone. Because the consumer is relatively “unknown,” however, some companies decide to just migrate consumers to cost reducing self-service channels, which can sometimes actually elevate dissatisfaction levels. In the realm of multichannel engagement, where the consumer dictates how to use these channels, this decision becomes much more critical.

10 objectives for multichannel engagement success

The key to meeting a customer’s expectations for their service experience is employing a complete multichannel strategy throughout the whole relationship with that customer. Here are 10 objectives that, working together, can help most any contact center create a cost-effective multichannel engagement and improve the customer relationship lifecycle in its entirety.

1. Have a “data filter” for all channels. Certain channels in the multichannel mix are affected by “noise.” Think of all the extracurricular noise that travels through social networks, for instance. A “data filter” strategy — a distinct set of criteria, from influencers to sentiment, and from trends to categorization of conversations — can help contact centers discern critical consumer information from noise. Applied to all channels, this strategy should include supplemental workflows, business processes, and cost-reducing options such as IVR and eServices to limit contact center overloads.
2. Improve website traffic and page views. Callback, co-browsing, chat, and email can increase page views and conversion rates on a business’s website, and should be tied in with any analytics or marketing automation tools being used. An example here is a consumer visiting your site after having a positive conversation on Twitter regarding your company. Thanks to your data filter, the contact center agent knows about the consumer’s Twitter experience, and is well-prepared to engage the person via chat or co-browsing.
3. Implement a knowledge base. To decrease service support costs and help customers resolve problems, organize and provide FAQs, how-to’s, comments, documents, videos, podcasts, and so on. Automating such a knowledge base can reduce support costs even more, as can enabling consumers themselves to enhance information, collaborate for solutions, and provide expert knowledge to help other consumers.
4. Use mobile applications. Give customers the freedom to find and access content, conduct transactions, or “face time” to troubleshoot a problem, bypassing the contact center totally. Or if customers do need to interact with an agent, include options to chat, call, or email directly from the mobile app. 
5. Integrate the contact center with forums and communities. Blogs and public forums such as Yahoo! Answers and YouTube typically provide content that companies don’t include on their website. Therefore, consider incorporating company forums and communities as part of the contact center. Collaboration between the company and consumers improves, as do call deflection rates. You can also increase web page views and the number of customer advocates.
6. Establish business processes and workflow. Data filters, channels, integration points, customer data and the knowledge base must all work together to offer a superior customer experience. This is particularly important to maximize or maintain the relationship with the consumer. In the contact center, a business process platform can also help synchronize all transactions and business rules as needed.
7. Use technology that’s agile in the cloud or on-premises. Whether collections, sales, support, BPO, or so on, providing service via any type of contact center is crucial. Centers must be able to deploy new technology quickly, in any geography, for any channel, and for any customer segment.
8. Use technology that offers all-inclusive functionality. Having one technology platform for workforce management, monitoring, IVR, outbound dialing, and other contact center functions can streamline operations and enhance the customer experience — while reducing costs and deployment headaches.
9. Implement unified communications. Being able to combine voice, data, instant messaging, queues, emails, processes, workforce management, routing, and quality control is key to managing the customer relationship based on common analytics and reports. A unified communications approach leads to faster deployments, and provides one source of reporting on a single platform.
10. Go beyond CTI and IVR, integrate the CRM application. CTI and IVR processes are the most common way to integrate CRM systems with the contact center. Companies need to be more effective, however, in providing CRM data to the contact center agent. They need to incorporate customer metrics, surveys, and a 360-degree view of the customer and business logic. The more customer data agents have, the better equipped they are to assist the consumer.

Where to start?

1. Educate your company, including non-contact center groups such as IT, in the latest customer experience trends and methodologies.
2. Assess your company’s culture and processes to see where these 10 objectives fit in relation to your business needs.
3. Validate what’s worked, and what hasn’t worked, with previous technologies for the customer experience.
4. Gather requirements based on your processes related to the customer relationship cycle.
5. Set objectives, goals, and metrics.
6. Prepare an action plan and select your contact center technology.
7. Conduct a pilot program.
8. Implement in phases.
9. Validate results, and learn from each phase.  

This article is adapted from the white paper “Using a Multichannel Strategy to Deliver an Exceptional Customer Experience: 10 things to consider when building a multichannel strategy” by Jesús Hoyos, CRM industry analyst and advisor, and Brad Herrington, Interactive Intelligence, Inc.

Download the full white paper at www.inin.com.