The most successful contact centre operations are those that reflect the continually evolving needs of their customers. Today’s consumers take a multi-pronged approach when communicating with companies and the use of social media channels have had a dramatic impact on both the speed of the response and the way contact centres deal with customer enquiries. One of the latest emerging trends capable of taking customer service to its highest level is social routing. This new method provides the next step for contact centres to more accurately meet their customers’ requirements with a specific and tailored approach.
As the number of alternative channels widens, social media, web chat and video chat are starting to catch up with the popularity of traditional communication methods. This has increased customer expectations, who now look for the same level of functionality, service and interactivity for their product and service related query that they receive when buying online. One of the biggest problems is the gap between the buying experience and the support experience, and social routing could be the answer to meet this demand.
In simple terms, social routing effectively channels the customer to the most appropriate service representative in the contact centre. The consumer will be presented with agent options and will, in effect, select the best, most suitable customer service advisor themselves to address their query, complaint or information request.
Whether it is via an organisation’s website or on social media channels, social routing allows the customer to be presented with a menu of agents detailing each representative’s name, skills and biography. The skills information may include relevant details such as the language the agent speaks, their technical-know how or what they supply. Other useful data could include an agent rating, based on reviews from previous customers, and also the average waiting time, all of which is provided live and constantly updated.
Social routing puts the choice back into the consumers hands. The customer is empowered to make their own decisions, they can review the specific agent information and select the most appropriate option in an effort to get their query resolved first time. This new approach is still in its early stages, but as the communications industry continues to transform as fast as the technology will allow it – both consumers, and the companies they are interacting with, are bound to see the benefits in the not so distant future.
By Dave Paulding, regional sales director UK, Middle East, at Interactive Intelligence.
PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.
comments powered by Disqus