Building a Business Case to Transition from Call Center to Digital Omnichannel

Gartner predicted that by 2020, 85 percent of all customer interactions would be handled without human agents. 

In the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, this prediction began to take shape. Organizations were forced to adopt physical distancing, deploy work-from-home models, and test their business continuity plans as customers rushed to digital channels.

With an omnichannel strategy, you can avoid losing money annually due to poor customer service and provide the ultimate service that matches the needs of each potential customer. 

While many brands have begun to view the function of the call center as an opportunity to provide personalized yet strategic and experience-oriented customer care, integrating the call center is another challenge entirely.

Shifting to the Digital Omnichannel Approach

With traditional call centers, consumers would have to comply with whatever service offering businesses provided. Today, things have come full circle, and it’s integral to run an omnichannel call center as part of any customer engagement strategy. 

Advancements and growth in technology have empowered consumers to shop in any way that suits them. Consequently, if brands fail to offer all the possible services available on an equal quality level, they miss out. 

In short, the more diverse call center offerings a brand has, the more customers it can attract. 

But how do you go about achieving this end? What do you need to do to transition from call center to digital omnichannel?

Making the Transition to a Digital Omnichannel

A digital omnichannel call center allows customers to reach out to your support team for help however they want without explaining their issue each time they switch channels. This way, the customers can easily change their mode of communication. And the channel will sync up all the data, so that customer care agents know whether it’s a first-time or repeat experience for that particular customer. 

This approach ensures that companies pass context between channels. For instance, if a customer reaches out about a recent purchase, the team of agents knows how many times the customer has called about issues, opened a live chat for quick help, and still has pending cases.

A customer care agent can switch from text to call mid-conversation so that the customer can share more details about their purchase and reach a resolution without dropping the conversation.

Getting omnichannel right is no mean feat, partly because of legacy technology, the cultural shift required, cost implications of providing channel choice, and the delicate balance that companies must create between human and automated interactions. 

This is why it’s vital to get the planning part right and be as specific and realistic as possible when setting omnichannel goals. 

The first step is to get your team comfortable about the transition, as this will increase their confidence in the process you’re about to introduce and implement.

Win Employee Buy-in for the Digital Transition

Getting employee and management buy-in and commitment for a digital omnichannel call center ensures that you get a team of champions that are comfortable and certain about it. These champions will convert others who will support the initiative and become its proponents across the company. 

Do this before starting the process to increase your chances of a successful implementation and higher buy-in across the company. Plus, it’ll be easier and smoother to implement when everyone is engaged. 

There are many things you can try to do to get employee buy-in, especially in the face of company restructuring and changes. 

Digitalization may bring many benefits to the company, but you won’t be successful without employee buy-in. 

How your employees react to the digital experience will impact getting the transition to an omnichannel experience right. Some will embrace it, while others will hesitate to champion the change or resist it altogether.

Have an open-door policy to communicate openly with call center employees and deliver proactive messages about the transition. Empower them to know how their work and roles contribute to the overall success of the project. 

In addition, invest in the employee experience design to mitigate the challenges on the path to the end goal and be responsive about their concerns over the project. Showcase the benefits for the team and keep them updated with the progress, wins, and any challenges for better transparency and accountability along the way. 

Implement Using a Pilot Process

With your team on your side and the process having kicked off, you can set up a minimally viable pilot process instead of waiting until the process is complete and perfected. From here on, you can rapidly cycle improvements through live testing until you meet your customers’ predefined requirements. This way, you can redesign the customer journey and build capabilities that will help you scale quickly in a bid to release a basic version of the omnichannel call center in a given period.

Focus on selective transformation rather than digitizing multiple omnichannel elements simultaneously while singling out what’s most important to your customers. Map the flow across devices, functions, and channels while identifying where the pain points are.

Finally, reimagine the customers’ optimal journey experience and ensure a clean intersection between processes across platforms for a superior customer service experience.