Frost & Sullivan's Customer Contact Research, Analysis, Trends & Great Content : ANALYST INSIGHT

Frost & Sullivan, Customer Contact eBulletin, Vol. 7 Issue 1

4 Ways to Offer Great Omni-Channel Service

By Michael DeSalles
Principal Analyst
Frost & Sullivan

Customer contact centers right now face a unique combination of challenges and opportunities. On one hand, customers are more demanding than ever, budgets are often tight, and the wide variety of new channels has made the work of managing the contact center increasingly complex.

But on the other hand, this new omni-channel environment is also giving organizations more opportunities to use great customer service as a differentiator against the competition. Advances in technology have also given businesses new ways to meet their customers’ needs and gather feedback to improve the customer experience.

Frost & Sullivan teamed up with Rosetta Stone and Knoah Solutions to produce an eBroadcast, Optimizing Your Unique Multi-Touch Customer Support Strategy, discussing the steps companies should be taking to transform the customer service experience today, and how choosing the right tools and partners can help organizations keep their contact centers on the cutting edge.

Trends Driving Change in the Contact Center

The biggest change contact centers face has been the rapid shift from a multi-channel approach to customer contact to what Frost & Sullivan calls an omni-channel environment. That’s when a company creates a multi-channel customer experience by design, not by accident. It requires ensuring the same high-quality interactions regardless of the channel the customer chooses, and allows the company to drive people to the channels that most benefit the organization and the customer.

As customer expectations change, meeting those service needs will be critical for getting ahead of the competition. Doing so will help turn customers into brand advocates, allowing the contact center to ad real value to the organization.

How can customer service leaders do that? One of the biggest keys is taming complexity, which can be accomplished in a few ways:

1. Partner Right

Finding the right mix of internal agents and external partners was critical for streamlining and improving customer service at Rosetta Stone, said Rick Black, the company’s Senior Director of Consumer Customer Service, during the eBroadcast. Right now, 35% of agents are internal and 15% work from home, while the 50% are outsourced, Black said.

That gives Rosetta Stone an internal core that fully understands the company’s products and services and can more readily adapt to changes in operations, while also having a more scalable and cost-effective external team with access to industry expertise and cutting-edge technology.

2. Drive New Channels

Another part of providing great service is to offer the channels customers want and make sure they’re using them. The key is finding the channels that benefit both the customer and the company.

For Rosetta Stone, those were digital channels such as online chat and self-help tools, Black said. Therefore company made a deliberate effort to lead customers in that direction by:

Making phone numbers harder to find – Where Rosetta Stone’s website used to ask customers to call, that information has been replaced with videos offering help.
Making other channels easier – Rosetta Stone offers free chat help 24/7/365, whereas hours for the phone are limited. Chat tools are also embedded directly into the company’s products.
Providing the right information – Rosetta Stone is continuously going over its articles and videos to make sure they’re as helpful as possible for customers, as well as listening to customer feedback about which tools are in good shape and what could be improved.

3. Prepare Employees

Making new channels accessible and effective requires not just the right technology, but also the right personnel. For Rosetta Stone, that has meant changing hiring practices so the company can bring on people who are skilled with a variety of different channels.

Employees are also cross-trained so they can develop their skills in different. However, Black also stressed the dangers of asking staff members to do too much multitasking. For example, while Rosetta Stone wants employees who can excel at both phone calls and online chat, having them do both at the same time will likely hurt the customer experience.

4. Continue Evolving

Part of the challenge customer service leaders face is keeping up with changing customer demands. Therefore it’s important not only to offer what people want to today, but also to be able to adapt to what they will demand tomorrow.

Black stressed the importance of listening to customer feedback to learn how channels could be improved and what new ones should be offered. Those new channels can be tested on a small scale before they’re made widely available.

That testing should also include channels that have been tried unsuccessfully before, Black said. Maybe there wasn’t a demand at the time, but everything is changing constantly and companies must listen to their customers to stay on top of those changes – and ahead of the competition.

To learn more, download the full executive summary for Optimizing Your Unique Multi-Touch Customer Support Strategy.