Call centers around the globe experienced some truly remarkable phenomena in the last two years. There was a complete shift to remote work, unprecedented demand and tireless efforts of our workforce and administrators who had to juggle innumerable challenges but remained focused and dedicated. 2021 marked the year that omnichannel communications and marketing cemented itself in strategic communications planning. Self-service and user-generated touchpoints continue to skyrocket as users and designers continue to perform and create nearly every task from their PC and mobile devices.
Tech-savvy wonks and marketers alike will claim they saw this coming all along; but the truth is that, in most cases, even industries and organizations that were trending ahead of the curve were still unprepared for the jump to the multichannel hyperspace.
Ordinarily, companies that aren’t prepared for a massive shift in customer preferences, demand, and communications suffer tremendously. If they happen to survive, these companies face an uphill climb and often incur massive technological and administrative debt just to catch up. But in an era where global events have realistic local consequences, the stress of multiple socioeconomic factors converging can lead to unprecedented hold times, a massive volume of inquiries, health related workforce shortages, and technology bottlenecking that spans across platforms, not just industries. But enough about the past. We lived through it once and don’t want to do it again. In order to stay ahead of the curve for digital marketing, we must develop strategies and future proof technology to recognize, predict and react to failure points so that we can, at the very least, maintain our bottom line.
Fortunately, the future looks bright. The industry has seen remarkable turnaround so far including an uptick in the fiscal health indicators and promising news on global health and human services front. Which brings us to your digital strategy. Having survived until now is indeed cause to celebrate; but it also offers incredible insight to your evolving omnichannel strategy.
While COVID-19 forced many businesses to rely on unproven proactive customer channels, it also forced the rapid deployment of multichannel outbound; but more importantly, the circumstances forced your customers to use multichannel inbound according to their need and preference and availability. In other words, your clients showed you exactly how they would be using your channels. These centrally managed, multiple digital channels were designed to be minimally invasive and convenient–ideal for the user preference shift. Our challenge moving forward is no longer the implementation or strategic rollout of these channels as well as new technologies; because unintentionally, most companies have already accomplished this.
For the companies that weren’t prepared to handle this major shift in dynamic, however, the fallout doesn’t have to be catastrophic. Here’s why: multichannel strategies require minimal administrative overhead and can be managed in the cloud, the faster these multichannel strategies can be launched, the better. By leveraging omnichannel strategies now, these companies can easily catch up and mitigate temporary workforce and cashflow irregularities in preparation for the inevitable changes and ripples that the industry will experience.
Traditional marketing and administration suffered greatly and may never return to pre-2020 management methods. We know that call centers that were able to deliver and maintain proactive contact with customers reported major reductions in the number of accounts that become delinquent or closed. We can largely attribute these success stories to the emergence and implementation of digital multichannel strategy. The new challenge, however, for 2021 and beyond is matching these strategies with cohesive, concise, seamless messaging and interface.
Alvaria can help you seamlessly connect customer experiences across all channels, preserving context across all touchpoints, with agents who can work from anywhere.
Learn about omnichannel customer experience.
