Our omnichannel series has offered key insights from industry experts on the top challenges that contact centers face when transitioning their strategy from multichannel to omnichannel, the important first steps to take on your journey, how to prioritize customer channels, and how to track the customer’s experience through multiple channels.
In this post, our experts offer their thoughts on which metrics will ensure that all channels are aligned with the omnichannel strategy.
ANNA CONVERY
Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President of Strategy, OpenSpan:
One important metric that is playing a role in shaping omnichannel strategies is first-contact resolution. It’s a critical indicator that can either turn a customer into a brand advocate or a brand detractor. But so many companies think of first-CALL resolution instead of first-CONTACT resolution.
- Do you know how many times the customer tried to solve their issue using a mobile app?
- What about their visits to the website?
- Did they visit your YouTube channel for instructions on how to solve their problem?
These are the questions that must be asked… and it’s difficult to know where your customer has been in their customer journey. That is why it’s so important to have as much information collected about the customer so that, if an agent is taking a call of a very frustrated customer, they have the insight into the customer’s previous journey points to offer a more definitive solution to their issue. Having the right information at the right time can truly turn an irate customer into a delighted one, if the agent can diffuse the situation by providing more expedited resolution.
MADELYN GENGELBACH
Vice President, Strategic Marketing, inContact:
Metrics are going to be different for each channel. Again, we suggest an incremental approach to adding channels and the idea of testing with a center-of-excellence. Say you are adding chat. Get your agents that are already really good at email, since you know they are good in a written format—their grammar is good, along with empathy and fact sharing. Start them with chat by trying it out with a few friendly customers. Have a test period.
Start learning and use metrics to ensure that channels and agents aligned. Survey the customer—the metric could be transactional Csat. After you talk with someone on voice, ask him or her how you did versus some other channel. The metric is about how well you as a contact center are doing, overall, after adding the new channel.
LIZ OSBORN
Vice President, Product Marketing & Solutions, Five9:
Customer Effort Score is a key metric that is being tracked by more companies. It’s absolutely critical in an omnichannel strategy because, if you’re hard to do business with, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve solved the customer’s problem. There is a lot of industry research which shows that pouring resources into delighting your customers doesn’t generate the loyalty and repeat business like making it easy for them to do business with your company. That is where you really see the payoff.
To read the full Q&A panel with more insights on the omnichannel evolution and how it will impact your center, download the article here.
