A strong opinion has formed that a contact centre consists of just incoming and outcoming telephone campaigns. In the conditions of active development in the IT field, online communication channels become increasingly important for client, such as Viber, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and web chats. One of the key indicators of the corporate customer focus is to give a client an opportunity to interact with the company through the convenient communication channel.
As practical experience shows, the optimal client response time in a chat should be up to one minute, and up to one hour in social networks. The answer to the customer has to be meaningful and consistent with the corporate Tone of Voice – the form of communication between the company and the client, which mirrors its corporate policy.
For instance, a customer is filing a complaint to us. Normally, one has to track down the history/log of his previous claims to solve it. Suppose that the client has addressed his issues in Facebook, Viber and web-chat. With the help of an aggregated report, we will be able to track and understand client’s points of contact with our company and to determine the overall quality of communication while providing problem solution. Thus, we are able to conduct deeper analysis for each client, it will be more precise, and it becomes extremely important if the complaint deals with reputational issues.
The basic principles of building multi-channel communication with clients are based on interaction procedures, the policy of responding to complaints or other manifestations of consumer experience, template libraries, rewarding rules that accelerate response to reviews, technical tools to search and to consolidate the reviews, and response speed to non-standard situations.
Multi-channelling is an excellent tool not only for the consumer, but also for the business, mainly because it is a huge dataset with client’s “pivot points”. After studying and analysing the data we can figure out how the client responds to various triggers (campaigns, discounts, clear-outs, awards), trace trends, conduct research based on the opinions of consumers.
For example, suppose that an FMCG network wants to focus on certain network stores which are the most visited. Using multi-channelling and a single tag-friendly platform, we collect data and determine the source of the customers’ most frequent complaints. Thus, we obtain necessary understanding – which processes need to be improved and how to make these stores more profitable.
The appropriate multi-channelling management is based on the following conditions: correct workload should be distributed evenly among all specialists, there are knowledge bases and templates fitting all kinds of situations, specialists are trained for effective communication and always keep up with all comments and activities on the web page.
It is very difficult to serve plenty of channels and to respond promptly to user activity at the same time, especially at peak times. To save ourselves from the risk of missing a comment, we use special platforms where several channels can be combined. Applying such a solution, we can track the history of client’s visits to various channels and calculate FCR. The capabilities of such platforms allow you to create an aggregated report from all channels, to embed automatic templates, to create a self-service menu, to use a chat bot, to tag each dialog, to create a client card and to enter data about it.
Suppose that we have combined all channels into a single platform, created a load distribution map for operators, connected a chatbot and a self-service menu to filter out the most widespread calls, and now we get a report from all channels, with particular tags for each dialogue.
What should we do with these reports? Our answer is simple: to analyse. Depending on your business goals, you can carry out the necessary analysis. For example, how users reacted to a campaign in various channels (positive/negative ratio). You can learn about different types of analysis and their implementation in our article analytics-based decisions.
For example, we aim to get an understanding of how our consumer audience reacts to a specific campaign. With the help of tagging enquiries, we collect data from all channels regarding the campaign, determine the number of positive and negative enquiries, figure out what customers were satisfied and dissatisfied with. We apply the findings to the subsequent promotions.
Thus, the use of multi-channel communication will help to increase the loyalty of your client, and you will be given the opportunity to aggregate consumer experience and to persuade the client to achieve the business goals you need. You will be able to demonstrate to your client the company’s openness to dialogue to your client, because you will be present in the channel convenient for him.
Studies also show that millennials (the main part of the financially reliable population) are more prone to chat online than to communicate with a phone operator. Therefore, in modern conditions, multi-channelling is necessary, otherwise you simply will not keep in touch with your client.