The Best Call Center Software: What is Omni-Channel? (Vendor Agnostic Perspective)

Your company is looking into a new call center software solution, and a word you might have heard of is “omni-channel”

In this video, I define the 5 categories of omni-channel and 3 benefits it provides for your company.

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About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your company is looking into a new call center software solution. But one word you’ve probably heard a bunch of times is omnichannel. If you’ve research vendors, you’ve probably heard that term thrown out quite a bit. But what exactly is omnichannel? Well, depending on the vendor you’re talking to, it probably means something different because they’re going to take that term and they’re going to spin it to reflect what their company offers. But what is omnichannel really from a vendor agnostic perspective? I’m a great person to ask that question because I’m a broker for all the major cloud contact center solutions out there. So I know the omni channel offerings from each one of these companies. And so what I want to do is make a video on my opinion on what omnichannel is and what it should be and what the benefits are to your organization, why you should be looking at omni channel solutions when it comes to your new call center software that you’re looking at getting for your company.

Confused? Contact me for my recommendations

But before we get too far ahead of myself really quick, if you like, my recommendations on the best Cloud Contact Center solutions, your company should be quoting. Reach out and contact me by email or call me (714.593.0011). I’ll help you make a lot better decision in a fraction of the time that it would take if you try to research this stuff on your own. That’s my job. I’m a broker for all the major providers out there. And the nice thing is, is I don’t charge your company anything for my services, so at least reach out, see what I have to say. More information on that at the end of the video. Also, go to our Web site and leave a review on the current contact center or call center solution that your company is using today. I’d really appreciate that. And not just me, but all the I.T. professionals out there who are looking for for call center solutions for their company. Would love to hear your recommendations or your review of your current solution. That’ll help them make a better decision, too.

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What is omni-channel?

Okay, so what is Omni channel? Well, omni channel to me, in my my interpretation of it, I’ve been doing this again over 20 years. I have I know every major cloud call center software solution out there. So the word omni channel has been thrown around quite a bit. So to me it really means omni channel means channels of communication. So omni channel means multiple channels of communication. So cloud call center software solutions, what they’re saying when they say they offer omni channel, they’re saying that we can offer a call center solution that lets your customers interact with you through multiple channels of communication. And to me, that is five major areas. So there’s five areas of four, five channels, I should say, of communication that can be included in omni channel.

Category 1: Phone

The first channel is the easy one phone calls. So obviously that’s something that everyone’s doing today and that everyone’s been doing forever when it comes to call center is your customers are reaching out on the phone to you and you’re reaching out on the phone to them.So that’s the first channel.

Category 2: SMS/MMS Texting

The second channel of communication that call center software solutions can include is SMS and MMS texting.

Category 3: Email

The third is email.

Category 4: WebChat

The fourth is Web chat

Category 5: Social Media

and the fifth is social media.

Make sure to have all 5 categories

So depending on the service provider that you’re talking to, they might say, Oh yeah, we offer omni channel, but maybe they only offer phone and text messages, but they don’t offer email or chat. maybe they offer phone text messages, email and chat, but they don’t offer social media as a channel. So you want to make sure you think about those five categories. And if all five categories are a benefit to your organization, you want to make sure you you really clarify what that cloud call center software vendor means when they say, yes, we do have omni channel queuing. So making sure that they include all five of those categories for you, or at least the categories that are most important to you.

Benefit 1: Allows customers to communicate with your company, in the method they prefer

Okay. So that’s omni channel define. But what are the benefits of omni channel to your organization? Well, to me, there’s three main benefits. Number one is it obviously gives your customers a better customer experience because it’s allowing them to communicate with your company. Using the communication channel that they feel most comfortable with. So if customers feel like they want to text your company a picture of what they’re looking at right now, they can do that. Or if they want to, you know, reach out to you over Web chat, they can do that if they want to call you. They can do that. If they want to email your company, they can do that. If they want to tag your company on social media and are interacting with somebody in customer service on social media, maybe they’re on Instagram all day long and they want to communicate on Instagram. It allows them to do that. So that’s going to increase your customer experience. So that’s definitely something that you want to think about.

Benefit 2: Measure/Manage customer experience

The second thing omni channel does the second benefit to your organization. It allows a way to measure and manage all those different communication channels. say for instance, today your company does allow the ability to for people to reach out to you through your website and email your company or, you know, use a web chat form or things like that. But do you have any way of measuring or managing how long it’s taking you to respond to one of those messages? So if a customer emails your organization for customer service or sales or things like that, do you have any way to make sure that email doesn’t get missed? Or do you have a way to measure how quickly somebody responds back to that person? Is it within 24 hours or is it within a week? Maybe by the time somebody gets back to them. The customer’s already soured on your company. They’ve either bought something else or they’ve decided your company just has poor customer service Know so. So is there a way to measure and manage that? Yes, there is. And that’s that omni channel feature does. It allows you a way to really measure and manage the response times. It also gives you a way to manage things like what’s being said when they respond. So you can use a AI, which is in other videos of mine to know what’s being said back and forth on chat, what’s being said back and forth on email, what’s being said back and forth on texting, how often are competitors being mentioned, things like that.

Checking your socials with Omni-Channel

What about social media? Are our customers tagging your company on social media and saying, Hey, this company did a fantastic job and then all these people are seeing that? Are you responding to that in a timely manner? Meaning that, hey, you’re saying, hey, thanks for the nice food, thanks for the kind words, really appreciate it. You know, just for that, you get a discount on this business or tell your friends if they call us, they’ll get a discount, you know, Are you replying to that within 24 hours of the post? Because if you’re not, nobody’s probably even seeing that you reply to the post. You know, social media works if you’re not responding within like a week, know, say it’s taking a week to get a response to that social media post. No one’s seeing it, so it doesn’t even matter. Or maybe somebody is complaining about something and they’re attacking you. Maybe you said, Hey, this customer service experience was terrible or this meal ad was terrible and they’re in there tagging your company. You want to jump on there and do some damage control while people are still watching. You don’t want people to look at that and have no response. And then a week later you respond and nobody’s even looking at it then anyway. So definitely something you can throw into the mix is social media when it comes to managing and really monitoring what’s being said and how quickly you’re responding

Benefit 3: Vendor Consolidation

And the last benefit of omni channel queuing is just vendor consolidation. So sometimes your company already has other applications that are doing these things for you. So, you know, maybe you have another application that’s managing all the emails that come into the organization or you’re managing the text messages that come into the organization. Well, that’s great, but I mean, how many different applications does your management have to look at all the different time? And is that really detracting from how often they’re checking those things? So vendor consolidation, getting all those things into a single pane of glass, getting all those things into a single window, a single application is going to help your managers monitor and manage those communication channels much more often and therefore more efficiently. So omni channel queuing offers vendor consolidations for all the different applications you could be using to measure social media and manage social media, text messaging, web chat, you know, email, all that stuff, phone calls, put it all into one window. So vendor consolidation is the final benefit there.

Still not sure? Reach out and contact me for help

All right. So which companies should your company be quoting for? Call center software? There’s definitely a small handful that would be a perfect fit for your organization. Problem is, there’s dozens, if not hundreds of options out there. How are you going to find them? Well, I’ll tell you how. Just reach out and contact me. Send me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). I’m a broker for all the major cloud call center solutions out there. And I know all the niches that these different companies have. So if you tell me a little bit about your company, I’ll ask you a few questions and I’ll tell you which vendors you should be quoting or introduce you to those vendors and introduce you to the best salespeople to work with at those companies. Also oversee the quoting process to make sure you get the best pricing from those companies. And the nice thing is, at the end of the day, those service providers will pay me my broker fee, so I don’t charge your company a dime. So you’re going to make a lot better decision in a fraction of the amount of time they would normally take you, and it won’t cost you anything. So at least reach out, see what I have to say because it’s free. So why not? Also, don’t forget to go to our website Aerocominc.com Leave a review for the cloud call center. A solution that you’re using today or just the. Call center solution you’re using today. Other I.T. professionals would love to hear your opinion there. And as always, don’t forget to like, subscribe and ring the bell. Thanks for watching and I’ll catch you on the next video.