Optimising customer experience is just as important as having the right omnichannel capabilities, says TelcoSwitch 

Diversity of choice for customers is key, but only if a positive experience is front of mind at all times 

The last few years have seen the proliferation of a range of new communications channels for customers to use when interacting with a business, with this trend accelerated by the pandemic. While many businesses have recognised the need for consumer choice and adopted new channels as a result, just as crucial is ensuring these channels are properly integrated and synchronised with one another, so that a positive customer experience can be maintained. This is according to TelcoSwitch.

A recent Gartner study found that 89% of businesses are now expected to compete on customer experience rather than pricing. Building on this, a report from Zendesk revealed that 60% of consumers consider the quality of the service they received as an essential component of their loyalty to a particular brand.

To ensure consumers can communicate with the businesses they buy from efficiently and in the ways that suits them, it is imperative that leaders see the big picture when embracing omnichannel capabilities. Ultimately, this means remembering that new channels are redundant if customers have a poor experience while using them.

Simon Blackwell, CMO at TelcoSwitch, said: “Providing customers with a range of mechanisms to get in touch can only get you so far, it’s integrating these channels in one place that makes the difference. If, for example, a customer places an enquiry on Facebook Messenger, but the company has no way of linking this up to a previous interaction conducted by phone, email, or web chat, then the customer experience becomes eroded and the consumer may spend their money elsewhere. Given just how highly customer experience is regarded by Gartner and other experts, implementing these communications channels in a siloed manner isn’t going to deliver the consumer loyalty brands need.”

To avoid these issues, Blackwell believes that organisations should think long and hard about how omnichannel has changed the dynamic of customer interactions, and prepare to adapt to fit this.

Blackwell continued: “We think of omnichannel as something reserved for large contact centre based businesses, but in reality this is far from the truth. While small to medium sized organisations don’t self-identify as being contact centres, they share many of the same attributes, such as social media adoption, SaaS based ticketing and CRM systems, online payment platforms, and more. Many of these companies are also ‘cloud-first’ in nature and aren’t beholden to legacy infrastructure that can’t quickly be cloud enabled. In essence, these businesses can adopt omnichannel solutions faster than their larger counterparts, and that gives them the competitive advantage when it comes to customer experience.”

“The post-Covid consumer will be different to the one we knew before the pandemic. They expect businesses to have adapted to new ways of working and won’t be as tolerant to long wait times and limited channels of communications as they might have been previously. Customer experience is more important now than ever before, so modern businesses must be mindful of this when evaluating how their customers can communicate with them. Those who properly marry omnichannel to deliver high-quality customer experiences will be the ones to enjoy the highest levels of consumer loyalty,” concluded Blackwell.

About TelcoSwitch

TelcoSwitch is a leading SaaS provider of Unified Communications and compliance solutions, delivered through its award-winning software platforms that support over 120k daily users in 65 countries.

The company’s solutions enable teams to connect and collaborate in the ways that work best for them, through voice, video, chat, call recording, screen sharing, and more, including advanced omnichannel customer experience solutions for contact centres.

Headquartered in London, and with offices throughout the UK, US, and South Africa, TelcoSwitch employs over 100 staff, and has enjoyed rapid growth, ranking 25th in the Sunday Times Sage ‘Tech Track 100’ league table of the fastest growing UK technology companies.

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