How do you create a delicious contact center recipe? By using a lot of things you may have never even considered, according to panelists from today’s session titled, “Best of All Worlds: New Face of Customer Service,” which took place at ITEXPO East 2014 in Miami, FL.
The panel boasted a strong lineup of speakers including: Olivier Coste, CEO, VideoDesk; Ann Ruckstuhl, SVP and CMO, LiveOps; and Brian Spraetz, Solutions Marketing Manager, Interactive Intelligence. The group was led by moderator Ken Landoline of Current Analysis.
Attendees of today’s panel walked away with one message deeply engrained in their brains: multi-channel engagement is the now and the future of customer service. There are no ifs, and or buts about it.
“We are all multi-channel animals,” Ruckstuhl says. “The time is right. Consumers are ready; the consumers have spoken and the technology needs to get ready. People would rather contact a brand through social media then call them, and that means the contact center is about sales and marketing in addition to support. There’s some catching up to do. The consumer is saying, ‘Serve me, know me, take care of me, don’t waste my time and if you’re going to prospect me, at least get to know me first.’”
So, can we ever bring the brick and mortar contact center to the world of online customer engagement? The answer provided by the majority of panelists was, “Why would we?”
“There are people who want that, but how many?” asks Spraetz. “We know what we want and we want it immediately. If there is a problem, we want it resolved as quickly and easily as possible. It’s as simple as that.”
Ruckstuhl gave a great example of why a traditional contact center simply doesn’t cut it anymore: the abandoned shopping cart. She says that the moment a company notices a customer’s abandoned shopping cart is a “critical” one. If a brand notices a customer is about to jump ship, it can initiate a proactive chat to try and re-establish that level of engagement needed. “They can also click a button to be taken to a WebRTC-based chat. This is what the traditional contact center can’t do.”
But beware: If you’re going to do social customer service, you better be prepared to go all out. A corporate Facebook account, for example, is nothing like one’s personal profile. “If you open up a Facebook account for your company, you better be ready to do business,” Ruckstuhl warns.
If you’re looking to ramp up your social service strategy, you can track high-profile keywords like “upset” and “refund” and track them, then filtering them to your contact center for quicker and more proactive resolutions, Ruckstuhl says. She adds, however, that if you’re not ready to add more manpower to manage social service channels, then don’t. It’s a big risk and you shouldn’t jump in ill-prepared.
At the end of the day, the recipe for today’s most powerful and successful contact center involves an equal dose of marketing, sales and support; a heaping cup of multi-channel strategy (especially social); and a dash of a responsible and fiscally-sound plan of attack to bring your vision to light. When all of these ingredients are thrown into the mix, that first bite will be truly mouthwatering.