Omni-channel plus a little magic: Win-win-win

Client in stress

Imagine your phone stopped working. You have called the provider yesterday and left a ticket. Now you are driving to work, and suddenly a call from the provider comes. They are offering several slots this week when a technician can come and look at it, but you can’t really consult your calendar (as you’re driving). You ask them to call back in 10 mins and you park at the nearest gas station and wait. They don’t call. You wait for 10 minutes and call them yourself. You only have an anonymous number, so you wait in the common queue for 10 minutes listening to the music before getting connected. Finally, you explain your problem — and the agent starts to offer available slots… and then the call interrupts. You have to start all over again! More time in the queue… Frustrating.

Now, what if it all happened in a different way?

You’re driving. A call from the provider. You tell them you will call them back from the nearest gas station. In 10 minutes? Perfect. Immediately you get an SMS with the appointment for the call, and with a special phone number, you need to dial.

At the same moment, you receive an email with the available slots for this week. When you call the provider, the agent who picks up the phone greets you by the name and askes: “You must be calling regarding the visit of a technician?” You let me know what time you want. Problem solved; you have just saved 20 minutes of your valuable time. You never waited or had to repeat yourself to an agent who has no idea of your problems. That is much more satisfying. And that is how a client-friendly omni-channel contact center works.

From the Agent’s perspective

The agent (name’s Peter) initiates a call. On the screen, Peter sees all the relevant information: your name, the history of interactions through all the channels as a single queue, any requests from you. When you say that you will call back, on the screen Peter sees an option to set an appointment. Clicks a button sends an SMS with a special phone for the clients who are calling back on appointment (fast track). And in the next instant Peter sends an email with one click — no need to put together the necessary info, it is already uploaded by the system.

When you call back, you are in the fast track. A few seconds later, another agent (Bob) picks the phone and sees your personal card on the screen at the same moment, along with the history of interaction through all channels. Bob greets you and continues the conversation from the point where you have stopped with Peter, earlier.

Client-friendly means agent-friendly

Why is being client-friendly, so important? Not only because of client satisfaction. It is because the agents are much more satisfied this way, too. Our agents Peter and Bob use a system with omni-channel functionality: all channels in the same time, unified history incoming and outgoing, channels may be changed. Their system has a single screen option: all information is available on the same desktop, no need for an external search. Saves productive time. This system has a ‘blended call’ feature. And integrated scripting option. Put together, it allows the agents to work only on productive issues, solving problems of the clients. The job becomes much more rewarding, much less routine, and much less nervous for Bob and Peter.

Agent-friendly is business-friendly!

Now we use to think that we can’t have it all. The traditional approach implied: better servicing happens when there’re more agents ready to pick up the call and cater to a client’s needs. That is extremely costly. Agents are few. Hiring and training worthy agents is quite a task. But with an agent-friendly, client-friendly system as described above, the call center can use the existing workforce much more effectively. With better technical equipment the result is better agent performance with fewer agents needed for any new tasks. That allows paying more attention to existing agents and improving their work conditions, at the same time improving customer service.

That is a win-win-win situation.

One achieves it with SoftBCom Contact Center All-in-One solution.

Detailed features description one can find at https://www.softbcom.com/#one.