Multi-channel Communications

In a survey undertaken in May 2010, ProtoCall One found that one out of every six contact centres (16%) in the UK is now recruiting for agents to support multi-channel communications projects. This finding reflects the fact that the contact centre industry has finally recognised that the time is right to gear up to support not only voice but also email, text messaging and online collaboration such as web chat.

Best practice approach
The good news is that ProtoCall One customers are already ahead of the game. For example, NSPCC recognised two years ago that the children and young people who need to use the ChildLine service are far more willing to interact by these new contact methods. They needed to provide their counsellors with the desktop tools to manage all types of interaction in a consistent way. Using Genesys Agent Desktop, we helped them to implement a true multi-media contact handling solution – that dramatically reduced the training time for the workforce for 1,400 part time staff. Read about the NSPCC here.

The rise in use of social media will only increase the rate of adoption of multi-channel communications. As consumers we are quickly becoming a nation that tweets regularly; reads online blogs instead of newspapers; downloads music from iTunes instead of buying CDs; and watches TV via on demand websites or clips from Youtube.

Responding to the rise in Social Media
There are two ways in which contact centres can respond to this emerging trend. The first is to use these new channels for information distribution. As well as providing web site information via their corporate sites, many forward thinking organisations now have pages on Facebook, Digg and Myspace; and contribute to the online communities that their customers use via blogs. They recognise that customers are already using these services and it is a ready-made vehicle to quickly disseminate information.

The second approach is to be able to respond to the customer when they are using your online site. Multi-channel communications can support the following types of contact:

• Callback - where the system recognizes that a user is ‘stuck’ on a particular page and a pop-up window appears allowing the user to request a telephone call from an agent
• Web chat - which is similar to call back but where an online live chat session is instigated by the contact centre agent
• Collaboration Tools - are specialist functions like online whiteboarding where content is pushed to user by the contact centre agent
• Chat Moderators - where the contact centre agent has direct online involvement in a community - for example this is popular in the gaming industry where chat moderators act as hosts in an online bingo hall
   

Find out more
Download the ProtoCall One multi-channel contact strategy white paper now to see how your company can best respond to the Social Media revolution that is heading your way.