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Customer engagement is constantly improving in the space of contact center and shifting to create more and better experience to a customer. Most of the call centers are gradually improving and turning into a contact center. Earlier it used to be only Inbound (i.e. Call centers) and as the technology progressed, more types of customer engagement technology evolved (i.e. Contact centers).
Looking at today’s scenario, we are in a constant improvement of redefining the customer journey through innovative interface and maximum communication platforms and drive customer engagement like never before. This gave birth two major channel types called as Omnichannel and Multichannel.
Note: There are many ways for a customer to interact with the business such as Inbound, Chat, Email, Social Media etc. These are called as channels (i.e. Inbound is a channel type and Chat is another channel type).
Today, in this article we will look at the below topics
Definition of Omnichannel
An Omnichannel Contact Center is a customer experience strategy for delivering a seamless experience across multiple channels. “Omni,” translates to “all” and omnichannel means all channel, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the contact center would operating all known and possible mediums of communication. Instead, omnichannel contact center integrates all channels of communication in such a way to provide a seamless experience to the customers.
For example, a customer may be browsing a company’s website and ask a few questions via the website’s chat option. After chatting with an agent, the customer may go on their way but come back to the website one week later. This time, the customer selects the click-to-call option to receive a call back from an agent. When the agent calls the customer, the agent can see a log of the customer’s previous chat conversation, as well as information about the customer’s visits to the company website including the products, they are interested in. The customer doesn’t have to get the new agent up to speed—the agent can just jump right in and help the customer have a great experience.
Differences between Omnichannel and Multichannel
Now, the term Multichannel seems the same as Omnichannel, but there is a major difference between them. The term “Multi” means “many”, so multichannel means many channels. Customers can connect using multiple channel such as Inbound, Chat etc.
However, the major difference between the Omnichannel and Multichannel is that Omnichannel isn’t siloed, where as the Multichannel is siloed. This means that the agents in multichannel environment are dedicated for each channel and due to this the customer may not have a seamless experience.
This also means what happens in one channel isn’t shared to agents supporting the other channels. Information and interaction histories begin to exist in silos – which can lead to frustrating encounters for your customers and your agents.
Imagine this: your customer sends an email and follows up with a call. The agent taking the call has no visibility of the previous request for help, and no idea what actions were taken on their behalf. Your organization is forced to handle the same issue twice – annoying your customer by requesting information they’ve already given and costing the business more.
Workforce Management methods for Omnichannel
As we know, Workforce Management is a strategy of Forecasting, Capacity Planning, Scheduling, Real Time Monitoring and Reporting, we are going to limited this article to basics of Forecasting, Capacity Planning, Scheduling of a Omnichannel environment.
The Volume Forecasting is the most important part of the WFM process. The process of forecasting volume for Omnichannel doesn’t have any special formula or procedure and we treat it as normal as we do for any other channel.
Here, each channel’s historical data is gathered separately, the level, trend and seasonality are analyzed and the forecasting is built for each channel separately. Finally, all the forecasted volumes are added together to arrive at the final volume to be planned for
Forecasting AHT is pretty much the same as the Volume forecasting, where each channel’s AHT is forecasted separately with the help of Historical AHT and Volume. Once we have the AHT for all the channels, we will then use the weighted AHT of all the channels as the final one for planning
Calculating the Occupancy for a Omnichannel environment is the trickiest part. Since we may have blend channels such as Inbound, Outbound, Chat, Email etc., the occupancy for each channel varies. For instance, the Occupancy for Inbound and Chat are completely dependent on Erlang Simulation whereas the Occupancy for Outbound and Email can be planned at 85%.
We may calculate the occupancy for each channel separately and later calculate the weighted average to get the final occupancy. However, this method is debatable and there are chances that the final occupancy could be wrong. For the sake of article, we will go with a blended occupancy of 85% as of now (Very soon, there will be article dedicated only on How to calculate Occupancy for Omnichannel)
We have calculated the Volume, AHT and the Occupancy which are required for the Capacity Planner. The only thing left out is the shrinkage and attrition assumptions. Fortunately, both shrinkage and attrition are not dependent on the channel type and is a common behavior across any channel. Therefore, just by using the historical data, we can consider a strategic decision on what shrinkage and attrition to be used.
Note: Please click on the below link to read the article on “Fundamentals of Capacity Planning”
Now we have all the required data points to build a capacity planner and to calculate the requirements and the Handling Capacity. Perhaps, we can also divide the handling capacity against each channel to understand the performance against each channel
Scheduling is the most intriguing part of WFM for Omnichannel. It requires a lot of patience and skill to build the most appropriate scheduling. We are going to understand the manual scheduling process on a high level.
Earlier, we saw the Volume, AHT and occupancy. This should be bifurcate at an interval level to get the interval wise requirement. The interval length could be either 60 minutes or 30 minutes or 15 minutes depending upon the company and the WFM system.
While calculating the interval wise requirement, it is very important to consider the service level goal of each channel. For instance, the Inbound & Chat may be at 80% in 30 seconds whereas the Email & Outbound may be at 100% in 24 hours.
This makes us realize that, the inbound and Chat will have a higher activity compared to Email and Outbound. A scheduler will analyze the call arrival pattern of the day and will schedule all the agent primarily to handle the Inbound and Chat. During the lean interval where the Call and chat flow are less, the Email and Outbound activity is scheduled. Finally, after building the schedules, the scheduler should be able to calculate what could be the possible service level goal which can be achieved.
With trial and error method, we may come up with the most optimized schedules where the service level goals are met and the compliance is also maintained.
Benefits of Omnichannel environment
Some of the major benefits of having a Omnichannel environment in a contact centers are as given below
As we have integrated all the channels under a single roof, the customers may not have to repeat their issues again as the agents will already have record of previous transactions and the resolution/information provided to the customer. This saves time of the customer and in turn increases the Customer Satisfaction.
Omnichannel such as chat, social media, forums and even webinars, leave a recorded written customer trace. Depending on what you do with this data, accumulating customer information in its context can give you a wider scope into how your clients interact with your brand and their different needs across the various channels. Such information can allow you to tweak and improve your customer service to better cater to your clients.
Customers are becoming more demanding every day, and marketers are having to put in effort to keep up. Customers want, and expect, their needs to be met now. If you fail to deliver real-time answers to queries, you’re indirectly encouraging customers to leave. Most omnichannel platforms allow you to engage with your customers in real-time via chats or video, and even through screen sharing and co-browsing.
Customer engagement is an important consideration if you want to reach your business goals. By providing real-time solutions, your customers become attached to your brand, and feel actively involved with your products or services. Provide the best customer service possible, and, as a result, you will grow your brand.
As agents are able to quickly respond to client’s queries, this means more time can be spent training agents for more challenging situations. They can go beyond assisting the standard operational day to day calls and handle more elaborate cases.
Not only is this a bonus for your call center, but agents will feel more empowered and gain a greater sense of responsibility, making them more likely to feel fulfilled and stay within your organization.
In line with the point above, another benefit of omnichannel is the challenge it presents for agents. The challenge of having to handle more complex cases, needing more in-depth training and the added value they bring, all contribute to an increase in employee satisfaction.
This directly contributes to their wellbeing within the organization and could potentially help decrease attrition.
Final Conclusion
Omnichannel is not about everyone taking every media; it’s about managing all media effectively and creating a “seamless, integrated” customer experience as they use their channels of choice. Common things such as Routing, Reporting and Management across channel is very important to achieve.
The Forecasting and Scheduling process if performed manually will be very cumbersome and we may not achieve greater efficiency in it, therefore it is highly important to select an appropriate WFM system which comprises all the activities and provide greater efficiency with less processing time.
The future of every contact center is Omnichannel and the WFM strategy for it is improving as the days passes.
Thank you for Reading and Stay Tuned😊
Disclaimer: This article is purely my personal view and understanding, this doesn’t depict any organization data
Vinay Vasudevan
Sr. Manager - Accounts & Finance at Sagility
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