What Is A Multichannel Contact Center
Contact Center

What is a multichannel contact center?

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Ready to increase customer engagement and satisfaction, reduce average handle time and grow sales? Then it might be time for you to consider a multi-channel contact center for your business. 

Call centers, contact centers, multi-channel contact centers: there’s a lot of terminology floating around, and it may be difficult to know exactly what services are included in different types of contact centers—and which is right for your business. 

In this article, we’ll understand exactly what a multi-channel contact center is, what it can offer, and the differences between multi-channel contact centers and other types of contact centers.

So what is a multi-channel contact center? 

As the name suggests, multi-channel contact centers provide customer support for many channels, which could include voice, SMS, email, social media, and web chat, among others. With multi-channel support, customer engagement increases, as it allows customers to reach out to you on whichever channel is most convenient for them. 

This, of course, improves customer experience and satisfaction, leading to more positive reviews and repeat purchases.

Multi-channel contact center services

A multi-channel contact center can provide a variety of services, including: 

  • Inbound and outbound voice calls
  • CRM integration
  • Customer satisfaction tools & customer engagement analytics
  • Email, web chat and SMS
  • Social media 

It’s not just contact-based solutions and services a multi-channel contact center can offer. Providing multi-channel support to your customers is a major driver of customer satisfaction and gives your brand a competitive advantage to provide exceptional customer service and care. 

Remember that multi-channel contact centers can also be outsourced, freeing up time and energy on your teams while still providing an excellent customer experience. When outsourcing a contact center, look for a customer-centered contact center who offers multi-channel or omnichannel contact center solutions.

Multi-channel contact centers vs. traditional call centers

When considering a multi-channel contact center, you might be wondering what value it can provide beyond a traditional call center. While traditional call centers can handle both inbound (customer calls and requests) and outbound (sales, marketing, customer surveys and research, etc.) voice calls, it provides a limited way for customers to get in touch with your business. 

In today’s modern world, customers expect quick and convenient service that fits their multitasking needs. They want to be able to process a return on the bus ride home, send a quick text to ask a question before they hop on a meeting or DM you a question on social media after they saw a post about a new product launch. A multi-channel contact center provides support in all of these channels, leading to increased customer engagement and positive customer experiences.

Are multi-channel contact centers worth it?

Multi-channel contact centers have numerous benefits to both you and your customer: 

 

  • Supports multiple customer touchpoints and platforms for consistent branding and messaging
  • Cost-effective way to reach your customers wherever they are
  • Improves customer experiences 
  • Reduces costs and improves sales
  • Enables customers to contact your business more efficiently and reduces average handle time
  • Flexible and scalable to meet your brand and customer needs
  • and more!

 

A multi-channel contact center provides customer support across many channels, allowing your business to reach your customers wherever they are. In addition, having a multi-channel contact center streamlines customer contact, giving you the ability to communicate with customers with consistent branding and messaging, no matter how they get in touch.

Case study: improve sales by 25% with streamlined customer support

In 2020, FILA needed a better contact center solution. Managing many sections of a large business—and keeping things connected across all channels and sectors—is a huge task. 

For FILA, a lack of integration across sales, customer complaints, warehouse planning and more was losing them customers. On top of that, they had a backlog of hundreds of open cases that weren’t being responded to in a timely manner by their call center solution.

Global Response turned these problems around with omnichannel support and strategic, proactive engagement. 

With Global Response’s omnichannel CX solutions, FILA was able to standardize best practices across functions, reduce case response time, and scale up a team across voice, web chat, social media and more. 

The results? The holistic approach knocked out backlogs and brought first call resolutions up, and response time down. Customer complaints and requests for refunds went down by 28% compared to the previous quarter. And online sales grew 25%!

Going beyond multi-channel: omnichannel contact centers

Multi-channel, omnichannel; it’s all the same thing, right? Not quite—which these two terms seem quite similar, there’s actually an important difference: 

Omnichannel contact centers provide a streamlined, seamless experience for the customer across all channels, whereas a multi-channel contact center may be a siloed experience.

What exactly do we mean by that?

With a muli-channel contact center, although you might have support across a variety of channels, that support is often siloed. For example, you may have some agents that work on managing email responses, other agents that work on web chat, and still others that answer phone calls. Each of these channels would be siloed within separate technological processes at a multi-channel contact center. 

So what?

Well, when a customer starts a conversation via web chat one day and then emails a few days later to follow up on the issue, the team member handling the email will likely have no idea that the web chat ever happened—leaving the customer to re-explain the entire situation over again, causing frustration for the customer and increasing the handle time. 

With an omnichannel contact center, technological and systemic processes ensure that all of the channels you’re operating in are seamlessly integrated—streamlining operational processes and saving time for your team, while also providing top-of-the-line, personalized customer support.

What is better: multi-channel vs. omnichannel?

While there’s benefits to both, many businesses and brands would benefit most from omnichannel contact center support. From streamlined communication supporting both internal processes and customer experience to improved sales and customer engagement, an omnichannel contact center provides consistent and exceptional customer support for your brand.

Multi-channel contact centers Omnichannel contact centers
Can work across as many or as few channels as you need Typically works across most of the biggest communication channels
Often siloes responses by channels; agents may not be able to see previous customer communication in other channels Integrates communication across all channels to provide a seamless customer experience and personalized support
Reduces average handle time and improves customer satisfaction
Allows agents to meet targets more easily and makes use of modern technology and CRM systems to streamline operational processes
Increases sales and brand growth by providing a superior customer experience

How Global Response can help

If you’re looking for multi-channel or omnichannel contact center support for your business, Global Response allows you to provide a seamless end-to-end customer journey that emphasizes exceptional service and personalized care. 

Our brand-obsessed specialists are trained specifically on your business and powered by leading-edge technology that streamlines the customer experience, provides personalized customer support and meaningful data insights, and improves business outcomes. 

Want to ensure that your customers and clients always get the best level of service and support, no matter how they get in touch? Connect with a customer support expert today and see how our omnichannel support services can work for your brand!

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