According to a new survey by Shape the Future, businesses across the country are stepping up their efforts to implement multi-channel communications. Customers today want multi-channel communication options; this trend has lead to 96 percent of organizations using multiple channels to communicate with their customers.
The survey, commissioned by Azzurri Communications, found that only 27 percent of organizations have deployed multi-channel communications systems which allow the tracking of all customer interactions in one place. The result is that organizations are struggling to deliver an integrated and good quality customer service experience. In fact, poor customer service has lead 64 percent of customers to make future purchases from a competitor. In addition, it was also noted that customers move to a competitor because they were transferred between staff.
Rufus Grig, Chief Technology Officer, Azzurri Communications in comments about the survey said, “Those organizations that fail to join the dots of their customer interactions risk losing customers, as they will simply move to another firm that is more organized. Customers want to interact with the organizations that serve them by whichever means is the most convenient for them, but they hate having to repeat themselves across every channel.”
The survey found that in communicating with customers:
The survey found that while 96 percent of contact centers use more than one channel of communication, only 27 percent use integrated multi-channel systems to manage them.
The number one reason behind this slow adoption is that 40 percent of organizations have already invested in multiple solutions for different channels. Cost was another reason behind why organizations are hesitating to implement an integrated system. Most organizations gave an average estimate for implementation as 2.2 years while the actual average time for implementation as the survey found out was 1.8 years.
Grig further stated that, “Without a joined up view of their customers they are unable to respond accurately or quickly enough to their customers’ demands. If organizations are to meet their customers’ demands for timely and effective service via social media and all other channels, they must centralize all of their channels into one, integrated system within their contact centres.”
When it came to benefits of using integrated multi-channel communication systems the survey found that 63 percent of contact centre agents in organizations using integrated systems had access to full history of communication over all channels when interacting with a client. In organizations without integrated multi-channel communications systems, only 23 percent of agents were able to view this information.