Multichannel + Escalation Management = Omnichannel
Unlike multichannel service, omnichannel customer service considers the entire customer journey, and manages the escalations and transitions between channels and customer service representatives that sometimes need to occur to successfully resolve a customer issue. In essence, omnichannel takes an outside-in view of customer service.
Let me share a personal example of how organizations can fail to consider how they manage escalations. For a few days, I’d been struggling to stream a video service to my TV. Eventually, I realized I had gotten as far as I could on my own and decided to contact customer service.
To my pleasant surprise, I found out that it was possible to contact customer service directly from the mobile app using a VoIP call. The response time by the agent was quick as well, less than 30 seconds. So far, so good. However, as I had made some initial attempts to correct the problem myself, the tier one agent was unable to provide a fix and said that she would have to escalate the issue.
This is where my so-far-pleasant customer service journey fell apart. Instead of transitioning me to another service representative online, she provided me with a landline number—a U.S.-based landline number. The problem is I’m located in the UK. Needless to say, I never did make the call.
Organizations must make customer escalations as seamless and frictionless as possible. This requires organizations to address the following common escalation problems or sources of customer dissatisfaction:
- Focus on the escalation path between self-service and assisted service: As self-service becomes the most popular customer channel, management of the escalation path from the self-service channel to assisted channel has become critical. However, web self-service will many times not be enough to resolve the customer issue. Rather than trapping customers in a self-service maze, alternative channels must be offered at the appropriate time in the self-service journey.
- Offer the right escalation channel: It is not necessary to offer every possible escalation channel, just the right escalation channel. Certain channels complement each other better than others. For example, web self-service escalation to web chat, web chat to co-browse, or social media to web chat.
- Avoid repeated requests for information: A major dissatisfaction for customers is repeating information to customer service agents. Organizations must be able to capture the context and history of a call or engagement and pass this information to the next level of support.
- Consistency: The customer experience should be consistent across all channels. Organizational branding and look and feel should be similar across all channels. All channels, whether self-service and assisted, should use the same consistent source of knowledge or knowledge base.
- Avoid customer cost: Where possible, organizations should seek to eliminate customer cost— time and money—from the service journey. In my experience, it was wrong to transition my issue from a free digital channel (VoIP) to an expensive analog channel.
- Consider physical channels: If brick-and-mortar stores are a part of your customer service mix, your retail staff must have access to the same sources of information that you would provide to your contact center staff.
Proper escalation management is the difference between multichannel and omnichannel customer service. Read more.
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