Customer Interactions Beyond the Phone

It’s possible you know the different terms for the area of business that focuses on customer interactions and customer service.

The old term Call Center describes exactly what it was some time ago: A department that answered calls from customers and handled them until resolution. The telephone is / was the main interaction channel. That’s it.

With the introduction of multiple channels and customer interactions across these channels became common sense, the call center evolved to a Contact Center. This interacts with customers across all channels including voice, chat, email, social media, and more. But unfortunately, these channels were currently handled in a siloed way, data was stored in different places and agents usually do not have access to all of the different sources to see a full customer history. As a result, customers need to provide the information they delivered on one channel on the next channel they choose, which leads into customer frustration and a decrease of customer satisfaction.

Since the contact center evolution, we are moving into the era of Customer Engagement Centers. But what does this mean for businesses and their customers?

Nowadays, in the highly competitive market while jumping from one channel to another, business know that they need to keep up with customer behaviors and interaction channels. Failing is not an option here.

Many businesses went through these changes in customer service the hard way. They lost customers due to channel limitations or limited availability. The world is busy and so are your customers. They expect a service on their terms!

Businesses that are interacting with customers recognized the need to change their customer interaction strategy. Today, they know they need to deliver a seamless customer experience across all interaction channels – regardless of the selected communication channels and of how many different channels are used within one interaction. This is one of the few ways to drive customer retention, satisfaction and loyalty. Customer service is not just a one-time interaction – if a company is doing it the right way, it is lifetime engagement.

So here we are today, a customer engagement center, which unlocks siloes, delivers a seamless customer experience and satisfies customers and employees. It enables businesses to get the insights they need to deliver on customer expectations. Agents have access to information about former customer issues and behaviors at their fingertips: They are able to continue the interaction when it ended last time, and engage with customers in a very professional way.

Is your business already in the era of customer engagement?

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