This week in Contact Center Solutions we learned about a new acquisition, omnichannel in retail, the wide-ranging impacts of and inputs to customer experience, and the benefits of multi-channel callback via the cloud.
Customer interaction management solutions provider Avtex this week announced it has purchased Integrated Access Solutions. The latter company specializes in customized contact centers solutions based on Genesys and Microsoft platforms.
“We’re really excited to bring the IAS team into the Avtex family and cement a broader footprint in the West,” said George Demou, Avtex president and CEO. “The IAS commitment to quality and focus on CX technologies aligns nicely with Avtex.”
Providing customers with omnichannel experiences is one of the key themes in customer service today. And omnichannel is now widely accepted as the strategy that will drive retail into the future, according to a new white paper from DeviceBits. But definitions of omnichannel strategy vary, the paper says, and for many they address sales only.
“In its simplest form, omnichannel is defined as a retailer’s ability to sell its goods and services in both online and offline environments, with as close a consistent manner as possible,” wrote the paper’s authors. “But the broader retail strategy must be about more than just sales, right? It must be about branding. It must be about the customer experience. It must be about the multi-screen experience (98 percent of Americans switch between devices the same day).”
Indeed, and the contact center isn’t the only group responsible for customer engagement. Sales, marketing, accounting, shipping and warehousing, operations, third-party partners, and other factors and players also can have a profound effect on the customer relationship, suggests a new Aspect blog post. And all of the above need to work together to provide customers with seamless experiences across the enterprise.
In a piece noting the above points, Chris O’Brien of Aspect also talks about how businesses that do that are also better positioned to modernize and implement self-service options – which can lower their own costs and provide their customers with more control.
Multi-channel callback also can provide customers with more control and otherwise elevate the customer experience, according to Jaime Bailey of Virtual Hold Technology. And when agents call back, they can do so armed with empathy– saving customers time and energy, and making them feel valued, she writes.
She adds that when callback is delivered via the cloud model the companies that use it can expedite the turn up process, scale the software as needed, and avoid putting added demands on their IT departments.