I’m one of those sad Technology Journalists that gets excited when a new term pops up in the industry. So, when Mike Wheadon, Business Development Director at Formation Tech, suggested we had a chat around OptiChannel contact centres, I bit his hand off. My first question was the obvious one.
What IS an OptiChannel contact centre?
The premise of OptiChannel is optimal channels. Multichannel and omni-channel have been around for several years now and multiple channels can be filtered through to a contact centre. Mike told me about some stats that Avaya had produced with IDC that ultimately resulted in opening up all channels to a business doesn’t mean all customers will use them.
“The idea of optichannel is asking what is the task that you are trying to achieve with your customer?” Mike gave me the example where he is a customer of a business that implemented email and web chat into their contact centre - and removed their telephone number. When you’re on the move or in a hurry, the voice channel is still important. They may have utilised omni-channel but it’s certainly not optimal.
“Optichannel is finding the optimal channel for the task at hand”
Mike also referenced Amazon’s lack of web chat. They’ve clearly strategised that most customers want to order via self-service or email when there is a problem. Amazon are no longer dictating the channels available to the customer. They have worked out what their customers want and been flexible to provide a better customer experience.
“Self-service is king, and people will do what they can themselves. When they need help, it needs to be the optimal channel, not just what’s available”.
Voice is still the most active channel
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Mike Wheadon[/caption]
Mike told me that querying bills is split across voice, email and web chat. However, service queries still favour voice as it needs that personal and human touch.
I asked Mike if it was just customer perception that voice is better because the technology doesn’t work as well as it should? He said it was definitely an assumption.
“Naturally, you assume this as a consumer. I think certain things you accept will be slower. Phoning utility companies comes with the stigma of waiting forever so I’d opt for web chat. I can wait on a web chat whilst doing something else instead of waiting on hold with the phone in my hand”.
Delivering optichannel contact centres
I asked Mike how prescriptive you can get when delivering an optichannel contact centre. Mike explained its more around the way you design the contact centre.
“Just because you heard the term omni-channel doesn’t mean you have to use everything. What are you doing as a business? Do you provide customer care? Are you a transactional business?”
Analysing web traffic, for example, is a starting block for designing an optimal channel contact centre. Finding out why customers are contacting you and where is crucial when designing a businesses next contact centre. Based on data, task analysis and research, Formation Tech is designing what type of contact centre is required on a case by case basis.
Solution design
I asked Mike what sort of tasks were involved with finding the optimal channels in a new contact centre solution. “It goes down to a granular level. If you have a website but nobody can find your information, you need to sort your website out and maybe move your web chat to the top or get it to proactively pop up so people can find you”.
