While every brand seeks to deliver great digital customer experiences across multichannel touchpoints, voice support remains critical, as explained in our recently published white paper, Optimizing Voice in the Global Contact Center.
Join us on 17th June at 10AM CEST in our webinar to find out more and hear from experts Sarah Stealey Reed from the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) and my Orange colleagues Thomas Fayet and Duncan Hawkins, who are customer contact solution experts. Register online here.
voice remains critical
The ICMI research has found that while customers want choice in which channels they use when contacting a company, they will still expect to be able to speak with you. Customers who make the effort to call (and they see it as an effort) expect to speak to someone who can give them fast and effective help, especially when they are facing challenging situations. Your contact center must deliver.
In addition, customers are increasingly global and multilingual. Sales in emerging markets will account for 70% of global GDP growth in the coming years and these new customers also want support. Yes, they’ll turn to your much cheaper to run digital touchpoints, but they will be just as discriminating in their demand for premium customer experience. This means they expect support in their own language, even with people sharing the same culture and education – and will not be happy if they have to pay too much to dial your support line.
contact center strategies
What’s an enterprise to do? Should it make major investments in international call centers? When it does, how effectively can it build understanding of local regulation and customs? Can it find the right location and deploy effective infrastructure? Can it get the skilled staff? Can it really make do with Web-based support alone? Firms attempting to build presence in emerging markets must respond appropriately if they intend to build sustainable customer loyalty and engagement. Their future business depends on delivering good customer experiences from day one.
We think enterprises staking claims in emerging markets should work with flexible and reliable international partners equipped to help deliver a real multichannel platform with a global voice strategy. We recommend you consider:
- global coverage
- understanding of local law and customs
- flexibility: it must be easy to add or remove contact numbers without service disruption
- reliability
- control
It’s also important to take a look at the routing management and user interface of your potential provider. Your company should be able to access all your contact numbers and sites using a Web-based interface, and should be able to modify call routing and manage traffic in order to remain agile to deal with unpredictable contact demands. These decisions cannot be ceded to your provider, it’s your brand’s reputation and you must be in control of that.
power of voice is growing
When it comes to digital customer experiences, self-service and online service channels should still have voice at their core. The drive to internationalization means the power of voice is growing because when digital channels fail to deliver the right experience, it remains the most important customer touch point for any brand.
We hope you will join us for our Webinar to learn more about the evolving digital customer experience. Find out more about improving the digital customer experience here and read the ICMI whitepaper here.
Joël
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