Multi-channel customer contact is not an option for today’s contact centers; it’s a necessity. Phone calls may still rule, but the alternatives to real-time voice are too numerous and significant to ignore or treat as second class.

Most centers handle each medium in distinct organizational siloes, informally. Few companies integrate channels or use sophisticated tools in contact routing and handling. Most have little to no reporting on media beyond phone calls, and what data they have isn’t used for staffing and planning. This approach might “work” for small volumes with good people making up for bad technology and/or processes. But it’s not scalable or sustainable if:

• Marketing start pushing alternative channels
• Web self-service become so commonplace that it generates lots of email and/or chat requests
• Workforce planners strain to find staff suitable for each medium
• Customer satisfaction decrease due to inconsistent treatment and/or quality across media
• The voice platform hit end-of-life and trigger a need to consider multi-channel platforms

These changes cry out for a technology change!

Start by looking at available technology to stimulate your thinking about what is possible and what you should consider. Understand the functionality and its benefits. For example…

A multimedia routing and reporting engine will provide a common framework for the administration of agent profiles, skills, and routing rules. As you apply those routing rules, the ability to trigger logic based on what is happening with all media queues and agent skills and availability will optimize resource utilization as well as responsiveness to customer needs.

You gain a more credible story as a “contact center” leader or support resource as your integrated reporting lets you present performance across media. Accurate insights into agent utilization and time in work states lets you really manage your most valuable (and expensive) asset.

The data generated feeds into and integrates with performance tools – e.g., workforce management, quality monitoring, analytics, voice of the customer. And common knowledge management tools provide consistent answers to questions regardless of channels.

With those considerations in mind, it’s time to think about how to get there. Consider all possibilities for sourcing: premise or hosted, suite or “best of breed,” CTI-like solutions for external multi-channel routing. Use technology replacement as an incentive to change processes, not just technology. And as you define your path, consider the impact your new multi-channel environment will have on your adjunct systems (performance tools, CTI, KM, CRM, etc.) as you expand media under consideration.

Read Multi-Channel Technology Comes into Its Own to get some ideas on where and how to start.

Multichannel customer contact is a fact of life. Unfortunately, so are organizational silos and divided ownership of the media that your customers use, or want to use.  In an increasingly complex customer interaction environment, there’s no time like the present to get your corporate act together.

Start with a discovery process that takes inventory of the ways customers currently interact for various contact types, as well as the technology in place to enable these interactions. Gather the critical business drivers that the strategy must consider, along with the elements of corporate strategy and operational goals that will influence channel priorities.

Assemble a cross-functional task force to establish a vision for multichannel. Use the inventory to identify gaps, assess requirements, and surface dependencies. Prioritize initiatives to define a plan and timeline. Assess the impact on your people, process, and technology as well as your customers.

In a perfect world, the task force presents a cohesive multichannel strategy and plan to a cross-functional steering committee that assumes the mantle for making intelligent investments and monitoring business impact. They can get (and keep) everyone on the same page, working together toward common goals. They’ll ensure that the appropriate “connective tissue” gets put in place for end-to-end service delivery and hold the responsible parties accountable for results.

An effective multichannel governance structure demands focused attention to the following critical success factors:

1. Visible endorsement and support by senior management to champion the strategy, build coalitions to support it, and create the desire for change
    
2. Representation from all stakeholders to establish a broad base of support, leverage distinct perspectives, institute peer review, and promote the initiatives across the organization
    
3. Understanding of and allegiance to common goals and vision
    
4. Documented policies and procedures that govern project submission, evaluation, rating/ranking, approval, monitoring, and post-implementation assessment
    
5. Oversight of investments and resource allocation across all customer contact channels
    
6. Performance management to measure tangible contributions to business goals
    
7. A formal change management process to overcome resistance and dramatically increase the likelihood that projects will succeed

A carefully constructed strategy, an effective governing body, and the right foundational tools make it possible to optimize the customer experience while delivering on the organization’s business objectives.

For a more detailed discussion on this topic, read the full article entitled Pursue Strategy and Governance to Ensure Multichannel Technology Optimization.

In a world of expanding customer contact channels and the departmental silos that go with them, is it possible to optimize the customer experience and deliver on business objectives? The answer can be a resounding “YES!” given a carefully constructed multi-channel strategy, an effective governing body, and the right people, processes, and technologies to support them.

Three foundational technologies serve as the “glue” to create a consistent framework for service delivery and channel management: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Knowledge Management (KM) or Wikis, and cross-channel analytics. They serve three critical business objectives:

• Knowing who your customers are so that you can tailor your products, services, and channels to their collective and individual needs
   
• Delivering information about your organization and its products and services accurately, efficiently, and consistently for internal and external consumption
   
• Managing all of your customer contact channels as an integrated whole to optimize both the customer experience and operational costs

CRM is the centralized repository of information that records detailed information about customers – who they are, what they prefer, the business units and channels with which they interact, and the inquiries or transactions they’ve pursued. It provides a consistent window into the customer relationship no matter which business unit or channel they engage.

KM captures, manages, and shares information. KM solutions mine repositories (databases, document libraries, intranets, extranets, websites) in response to natural language queries and provide tools to add new information and insights. They’re adept at managing the organization’s intellectual assets as well as “tribal knowledge.” Solutions built to realize in-house efficiencies can be extended to web self-service with appropriate screening, filtering, and security provisions.

Wikis can be a faster, lower cost alternative to KM solutions. They’re collaborative, web-based applications that equip nontechnical users to create and edit any number of interlinked web pages using simple text editors. What they lack in capacity for mining existing repositories they gain in speed of information capture, organization, and presentation.

Cross-channel analytics is the discipline of measuring, analyzing, and fine-tuning the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of customer service delivery across all customer-facing channels. It traces customer paths within channels, across channels, and across time as they complete (or attempt to complete) transactions and assesses what’s working and not working by channel and across channels. [Read my post on Selection Criteria for Cross-channel Analytics!]

While responsibility for managing customer-facing channels may reside in different departments, customers should experience the organization as an integrated whole. Technology can be an enabler for delivering consistent treatment across all points of contact. But it requires forethought and planning to ensure that the critical technologies for service delivery are accessible across the organization and work together seamlessly.

Before you get too far down the road of building out your technology infrastructure and applications, get a cross-functional team together to set multi-channel goals and identify the tools necessary to meet them. Establish a process for evaluating technology investments against a strategic view of customer contact, not the individual department or channel owner’s needs. In the end, it will serve all of their interests.