If your business has a multichannel contact center but not an omnichannel contact center, it’s time to ask: Are we truly meeting the expectations of today’s connected consumers?
The short answer: Probably not.
Customers reach out to businesses through voice, chat, email, text, and social media — often switching between channels in a single interaction. If your contact center can’t provide customers with seamless, consistent journeys as they move from one channel to another, the overall customer experience (CX) will suffer, and so will your bottom line.
Research shows companies with strong omnichannel engagement retain 89% of their customers. If you’d like to transform your contact center into an operation that helps boost retention and elevates CX, this guide is for you. You’ll learn how transitioning to an omnichannel contact center can be a game-changer for your business, agents, and customers. You’ll also find out how to set up omnichannel services effectively, from technology to training.
Let’s get started!
A clue to what an omnichannel contact center is lies in its name: “Omni” means “all.”
However, omnichannel isn’t just about having all channels — it’s about integrating them. An omnichannel contact center uses cloud-based technology to connect channels so that agents and customers can communicate across platforms without friction. Those channels include:
The integration of channels and data distinguishes omnichannel contact centers from multichannel contact centers. While multichannel contact centers offer multiple communication channels, they operate in silos — meaning data from each channel is collected and viewed independently. In contrast, omnichannel contact centers integrate channels and customer data to create a seamless flow of information.
Why is data integration across channels important? Because it empowers agents to personalize interactions in real time. And personalization isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s essential for meeting customer expectations and building long-term loyalty.
Omnichannel contact centers solve seven key challenges for businesses:
According to the Pew Research Center, 91% of Americans own a smartphone and can call, text, surf the web, and access social media apps. Yet, despite this almost universal mobility, customers still face disjointed interactions with businesses. (If you know, you know: Have you ever submitted an online request, then called to follow up — only to repeat all the information you already provided because the agent doesn’t have a clue why you called?)
Omnichannel contact centers integrate and consolidate customer data, giving agents complete visibility into every customer interaction. For example, a customer initiating a support inquiry via live chat who leaves the conversation unexpectedly can pick up where they left off, even if they reach out later by phone. Omnichannel contact center agents have immediate access to all prior interactions.
The inability to connect with the right person quickly can be a huge frustration for customers. For example, say that a customer calls for emergency plumbing repair services to fix a broken water pipe. They are placed on hold for an extended period while an agent looks up information or locates an available technician. In this scenario, the customer — who is seeking urgent help — will likely hang up and call another plumber.
Omnichannel contact centers reduce hold times and call transfers by using tools like intelligent call routing to identify the intent behind each call and funnel it to the right agent from the outset. For example, repair calls can be routed directly to an available technician rather than putting the caller in a general support queue.
It is impossible to provide consistent service quality across disjointed communication channels. Poor service can frustrate customers and even anger them. As a result, contact center agents can experience stress and burnout because they must bear the brunt of customers’ ire and are constrained by the limits of the center’s existing tools and processes.
Omnichannel contact center software standardizes customer interactions so that agents can consistently apply the right messaging, tone, and solutions across all platforms. This improves customer service and compliance. For example, community banks concerned with increased scrutiny from regulators can confidently maintain compliance with federal and state regulations by ensuring the same legally approved, scripted responses are used across all email, chat, and voice communications.
Many contact centers today rely on historic — and often outdated — customer data. This leads to irrelevant or redundant interactions with customers, further compounding customer frustration and increasing stress on agents tasked with delivering quality service.
You can derive real-time customer insights in the omnichannel contact center with cloud-based analytics tools. Invoca PreSense, for example, passes a customer’s digital activity to the right agent when that customer calls the contact center. So, if a customer has been browsing an insurance provider’s policies for motorcycle insurance, PreSense passes real-time data to the live agent via a screen pop-up. This allows the agent to personalize the dialogue and answer the customer’s questions more efficiently.
Omnichannel contact centers remove inefficiencies and salvage missed sales opportunities by providing a single view of customer interactions. They connect marketing and sales — two vital but often siloed parts of the business.
For example, suppose a telecom provider runs an online marketing campaign. If the company operates an omnichannel contact center, it can track the number of high-quality phone leads the campaign generates and determine what percentage of those leads the sales team converted to closed deals. If the results are below expectations, the telecom provider can pinpoint the issue: marketing is driving low-quality leads, or the sales team is doing a poor job of closing deals.
In either case, by eliminating data silos with its omnichannel contact center, the telecom has vital insight it can use to improve its overall marketing and sales funnel.
Traditional multichannel contact centers struggle to measure agent performance and customer satisfaction across multiple touchpoints due to their lack of channel integration. Recent research found that nearly two-thirds (62%) of contact center managers can’t analyze enough phone calls to accurately measure performance.
Invoca uses AI-driven analysis to solve this challenge by providing performance metrics on 100% of phone calls. Integrating this data with omnichannel contact center software tracking response times, resolution rates, and sentiment analysis across all channels provides a total picture of performance.
Handling customer interactions across multiple platforms increases the risk of data security breaches and compliance violations by personnel. This is true in all business sectors, but especially in highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services.
Contact centers can overcome this challenge by using AI-powered compliance monitoring platforms backed by enterprise-grade security. For instance, a healthcare provider that uses Invoca’s customer interaction management solutions can securely process patient inquiries while fully observing patient privacy. Invoca is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant. It redacts sensitive protected health information (PHI) from call transcripts and stores data securely to mitigate security risks.
In addition to solving the seven challenges outlined above, omnichannel platforms can provide many benefits for businesses operating contact centers. Here are some top examples:
Omnichannel platforms reduce friction in the customer journey, allowing customers and agents to move freely between channels without missing a beat. In an omnichannel contact center, a customer who begins a claim inquiry via an insurer’s web chat tool has the same agent-assisted experience if they switch to a phone call.
Omnichannel contact centers provide agents with insights and data from prior interactions and touchpoints, reducing the need for agents to ask repetitive questions. These insights allow agents to personalize interactions with customers from the outset. They can work more efficiently and productively, which helps elevate team performance.
Greater access to unified customer data across all touchpoints in the customer journey allows for better decision-making in the contact center and throughout the business. AI-driven analytics of online interactions and offline interactions, such as phone calls, help businesses identify trends and common issues so they can improve customer support strategies.
Omnichannel contact center operations provide customers with fast, efficient, personalized, and accurate responses. This minimizes customer frustration, reduces churn rates, provides a positive CX, and eases stress for contact center agents.
By integrating customer data across all channels, agents using omnichannel contact center tools can resolve issues faster without requiring customers to repeat information. So, if a financial services customer initiates a chatbot inquiry about the status of a loan application and later calls to follow up again, the agent can instantly access the previous interaction to provide an informed update.
Omnichannel contact centers deliver higher FCR rates by using tools like intelligent call routing to ensure customers connect to the most qualified agent based on their previous history, recent inquiries, or website activity. Intelligent call routing improves the overall CX by reducing the need for multiple touchpoints and enhancing customer satisfaction.
AI-driven, cloud-based omnichannel contact center software automates routine tasks to reduce manual workloads for agents, including after-call activities like customer relationship management (CRM) system updates.
This can help contact center managers optimize staffing. For example, by using chatbots to handle simple customer queries, like responses to FAQs, human agents can spend more time focusing on complex customer problems and higher-value interactions.
Not all businesses offer an omnichannel contact center experience — yet. So, implementing this type of contact center can provide your company with a competitive advantage. Plus, customers who receive fast service and responses across all the channels they use to interact with your business are likelier to be loyal — and may even advocate for your brand.
Omnichannel contact centers are cloud-based. Here are five features of these contact centers that help underscore how they are superior to multichannel operations:
Cloud-based omnichannel contact centers can use tools like Invoca’s platform to track the customer journey from offline and online customer interactions. This provides a single view of customers across channels.
Invoca’s customer interaction management solutions harness real-time digital insights from customers’ online interactions to provide agents with the information they need to personalize experiences and keep advancing the customer journey.
Omnichannel cloud contact center solutions use AI-driven intelligent call routing to assess customers’ needs and connect them to the right agent based on their previous online interactions. This helps your business improve key contact center metrics like FCR.
With cloud-based interactive voice response (IVR), you can deliver seamless, 24/7 customer service. You can quickly implement and calibrate IVR to provide human-like, conversational automated responses to assist and qualify callers outside of normal contact center hours.
Seamless omnichannel contact center solutions in the cloud provide the opportunity for agents to personalize all customer interactions. AI tools like Invoca’s PreSense provide agents with contextual data gathered from a caller’s online activity before a call is even connected.
If a caller browses an insurer’s “request a quote” page but doesn’t finish filling out the form before picking up the phone, that information is passed to an agent in real time. With that insight, the agent can deliver a personalized greeting, help the caller complete the form, and answer any other questions they might have before generating a quote.
See how PreSense works in this short video:
Omnichannel contact centers use the power of the cloud and AI to automate routine yet time-consuming processes like quality assurance (QA). With Invoca, you can automate QA across 100% of calls to score agent performance more accurately and help agents understand how to deliver optimal caller experiences.
Invoca’s AI also provides sentiment analysis. This process lets contact center managers identify friction points in agents’ conversations with customers. Managers can use this insight to eliminate scripts that are falling flat, create or refine more effective ones, and train agents to become better communicators.
Omnichannel contact center software integrates seamlessly with a business’s existing tech stack, including CRM systems, marketing automation tools, and analytics platforms.
A cloud-based tool like Invoca integrates easily with your existing contact center infrastructure, and leading software like Five9. Invoca also integrates with leading martech platforms like Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot, analytic tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, social media apps such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and industry-specific apps like Freshpaint.
If you’re convinced it’s the right time for your business to set up an omnichannel contact center, here are five steps to help you make a successful transition:
Outline the customer journey to identify common touchpoints where customers interact with your business, such as your website, calls, email, or social apps. Use this map to tailor your solution to your target audience and optimize your omnichannel services. Be sure to use omnichannel contact center software to integrate channels seamlessly.
Optimize agent-customer interactions with AI tools like Invoca, which extracts and analyzes customer data from online and offline interactions, including phone calls. These insights can help agents personalize customer interactions and enhance customer response quality.
Train live agents to handle interactions on every channel that your customers use, including phone calls, chat, email, and social media support. Agents should be proficient and comfortable switching back and forth between channels without losing context in their customer interactions.
AI tools like Invoca’s PreSense assist with this process by giving agents insights into who is calling and why before they even take a customer’s call.
Use automation to reduce routine tasks for live agents. This will help agents to be more productive and allow them to focus on handling complex, higher-value customer interactions.
Tools like Invoca make contact center operations more efficient by automating tasks like QA and creating automatic digital summaries of every phone call. Invoca can also handle CRM updates to reduce agents’ after-call workload.
A final tip is to prioritize and stay focused on omnichannel contact center optimization. Regularly review analytics to refine operational strategies, adjust staffing levels, and ensure your agents are making the most of available technology tools.
You can improve workflows in the contact center further by collecting feedback from customers and agents. You can also use Invoca’s AI to quickly and accurately analyze call transcripts to identify pain points and uncover operational inefficiencies.
Omnichannel contact centers are becoming vital investments for midsize and large businesses that want to meet their customers’ high expectations for frictionless and consistent experiences across every channel. With more companies shifting to this model, your business may not be able to hold off much longer on implementing an omnichannel contact center.
Invoca can help you get the most from your omnichannel contact center investment. Our AI-driven customer interaction management improves performance by creating seamless online-to-offline buyer journey experiences that exceed your callers’ expectations. And with access to tools like Invoca PreSense, your agents can delight callers with superior service quality that not only saves your business money, but also boosts conversions.
If you’d like more insight into technology tools and best practices that can help you improve your contact center operations, see these resources from Invoca:
You can also sign up for a customized demo to discover how Invoca’s customer interaction management solutions help optimize customer interactions in an omnichannel contact center.
Omnichannel and multichannel contact centers allow customers to communicate via multiple channels, such as voice, online chat, email, text, and social media.
The difference is that omnichannel contact centers offer a more holistic approach by integrating multichannel communication into one seamless experience. Customers can move effortlessly between various channels without contact center agents losing the thread of the discussion.
Multichannel contact centers offer multiple communication channels but do not integrate them. If a customer switches from online chat to voice or vice versa, customers and agents must restart communication from the top.
Omnichannel contact centers offer many benefits over single or even multichannel contact centers. Because they integrate contact channels, from voice to email to text, they support a seamless customer journey. The benefits of an omnichannel approach include an enhanced customer experience, increased customer retention, and brand loyalty.
The integration of customer data across channels also allows agents and managers to track performance more accurately. This, in turn, leads to improved agent performance, efficiency, and productivity. Agents in omnichannel contact centers have access to tools that leverage AI to personalize and manage customer interactions and deliver better outcomes.
