Not so long ago, brands solely communicated with customers via traditional telephony channels like voice calls and SMS, but customer communications have come a long way over the past decade. Organisations are now leveraging various OTT and social media channels to interact with their target audiences.
However, even though omnichannel communications are vastly improving the customer experience through links, images, and interactive QR codes, it appears that the multitude of new channels is also becoming a source of increased complexity and confusion.
Current Omni-Channel Challenges
“In a recent poll we conducted, 67% of respondents said they preferred to communicate with brands in-app to ensure that all information, requests, and issue resolutions are kept on the same interface,” shares Thomas Laboulle, Toku Founder and CEO.
At the same time, the influx of channels is also challenging on the brand’s side.
“Trading the ubiquity of traditional telephony channels for enriched communications across different OTT channels is something that must be assessed carefully, since ultimately, only a few brands require more than one synchronous and one asynchronous channel,” Laboulle notes.
“Moreover, it can be risky to put your entire corporate communication strategy in the hands of private entities, that unlike traditional telcos don’t offer alternatives in case their terms and conditions don’t suit you as a user,” he adds.
Toku’s Solution
According to Laboulle, the most sensible choice for brands nowadays is to invest in their own application, turning it into the preferred customer communication hub.
“It doesn’t exclude the use of other channels for certain use cases, but significantly reduces dependency on non-proprietary communication channels for interactions with the brand’s existing user base,” Laboulle says.
Toku Embeddables – a suite of Programmable APIs and SDK solutions – allows organisations to easily embed communication channels within their apps.
“Embeddable solutions are the most effective when integrated with a Contact Centre platform,” Laboulle explains. “This powerful combination can provide seamless communication experiences for customers, increase agent efficiency, and drive better business outcomes.
Before we explore the significance of integrating Toku’s Embeddable solutions with a Contact Centre platform, let’s review some of the overall benefits of in-app communication.
In-App Channels: Centralised, Secure, Efficient
According to Laboulle, there are four key benefits to using in-app channels to communicate with your audience.
- Consolidation – Using in-app channels enables the centralisation of all customer interactions in one place, which greatly improves the customer experience.
“Users no longer need to remember where they should look for a particular conversation or specific information, since they can find all the relevant data effortlessly within the app,” Laboulle says.
“Ultimately, that’s quite similar to the omnichannel interface we provide to customer support agents to manage all the communications on their end.” - Security and trust – Unlike telco and OTT channels, where phone numbers can be spoofed and fake accounts created to mislead users, the situation is different when it comes to in-app communications.
“In-app communications are proprietary and restricted to the brand’s ecosystem, therefore protecting against fraudsters attempting to impersonate the brand or a customer.” - Additional data and insights – Communicating with users from within the app provides agents with additional data points that can help deliver more personalised, efficient services.
“For instance, they can see exactly what a user selected in the menu, the latest items they purchased, previous tickets, etc. In some cases, they might even be able to access the user’s location to match their time zone and avoid catching them in their sleep.” - Seamless UX – In-app communications elevate the user experience.
“By providing a smoother customer journey, in-app channels contribute to an improved customer experience as a whole.
CPaaS and CCaaS: Unlocking Unlimited Synergies
As we can see, embedding communications channels within the brand’s app using Toku Embeddables can be a powerful tool for optimising customer engagement operations. So, why aren’t more brands adding in-app communications to their contact centre’s omnichannel mix?
“First of all, in-app communications technology is in its infancy. The adoption is increasing steadily, but most brands are still discovering the potential of building and managing proprietary communication channels,” Laboulle explains.
“Secondly, the organisations that are already using in-app channels normally don’t add them to their contact centre deployments because they typically work with two separate providers for their CPaaS and CCaaS solutions, making it extremely challenging to integrate the two,” he says.
This effectively means that even if integration is somehow possible, it still can’t be native, which means the information doesn’t properly flow both ways, limiting agents’ access to important pieces of data inside the contact centre.
The good news is that instead of having to deal with communication challenges alone, businesses can leverage the expertise of a provider to enhance their communication capabilities and enhance customer experience.
By partnering with a provider with both CPaaS and CCaaS expertise, brands can overcome current challenges stemming from the use of omnichannel communications.
“As a cloud communication and customer engagement technology provider, Toku allows its customers to embed voice, chat, and push notification within their apps, while also making it easier for them to access and manage these interactions via our contact centre interface,” Laboulle shares.
“Since these CPaaS and CCaaS services are natively integrated, agents have full visibility into all customer-related activity and communication in one place, enhancing both the customer and agent experience,” he concludes.
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