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Give the same exact information to every customer, regardless of the channel or level they accessed our service from.
Nowadays, customer expectations are so changing that Customer Service is getting much more complex.
Multichannel support services have replaced the classic idea of a support department or a Help Desk receiving calls. Today, phone calls, email, chat, self-service portals, knowledge databases and social networks are all possible channels for providing support.
In addition, customers become more demanding and the complexity in Customer Service Management increases considerably.
Companies need to centralize the management of their Multichannel Customer Service in a Single Point of Contact (SPOC) to deal with this complexity. Furthermore, companies that provide a physical and virtual support require an additional degree of flexibility incorporating the concept of Multilevel.
A Multichannel and Multilevel Customer Service provides customers with multiple ways to reach the company and ensures that they always get a unified response, regardless of the channel.
Great for those industries such as franchising, banking, retailers, telemarketers, utilities, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers, among many others that have high levels of capillarity in shops, offices, concessionaires, offices… With a Multichannel and Multilevel model, they assure coherence throughout their vast Customer Service.
Challenges in the implementation
These are the challenges that organizations should take into account before implementing a Multichannel and Multilevel Customer Service:
Support from Company Management: Like any other critical project for the company, setting up this model of service requires the support of the Company Management to make it a success.
Automation: It is an imperative to have a high level of automation so to quickly and effectively integrate and manage information obtained from different channels and access points, easily escalate to different departments, control response and resolution times, and measure the level of customer satisfaction through quality surveys.
Access to Information: Information has to be available to all agents working in the Customer Service; so that everyone is able to access relevant data at any moment the customer reaches them.
Multichannel: We need to provide a high level of accessibility to the service from the point of view of the customer (web, phone call, email, chat, social networks…), this way customers perceive they receive our attention and service at all times, in a diligent way and according to the quality parameters defined by each organization.
Ability to export information effectively: Export information easily and effectively is essential to implement continuous improvement policies properly.
Advantages of a Multichannel and Multilevel Customer Service
Assumed these challenges, Multichannel and Multilevel Customer Service helps you to:
Improve internal management: Each interaction with the customer has a clear preset procedure for registration.
Increase customer satisfaction: Customers perceive that their applications are diligently resolved from any channel within the agreed time limits.
Have more control over Customer Service: The registration of every relevant customer interaction coming from any channel lets the Quality and Customer Service Departments act at any moment if they detect any deviation of the support process.
Adopt a global culture of customer service: This model exports and encourages the culture of customer service throughout the organization, beyond Customer Service.
Implement a quality and continuous improvement policy: Having more information about customers makes it easier to identify trends and gaps so to continuously improve the service.
A good example is in the automotive sector. Suppose an automobile brand has:
– Headquarters..
– A local office in each country where it operates.
– A network of dealers from where they market their vehicles and provide the after-sales service to their customers.
Customers can interact with the Brand through different channels such as the dealers, the telephone customer service in each country, the corporate website, social networks and temporary channels like salons or automotive fairs.
In this case, customers have multiple possibilities of interaction so, in order to attend the customer properly, company agents and departments need to retrieve real-time information about any customer, the state of the service they are receiving, the channel of interaction, etc.
If a customer requests something from a dealer, who initiates the process, and then contacts the company by telephone to know the status of the application, they need to get the same information in both channels (dealer and telephone).
This example illustrates the importance to move beyond multichannel support and start providing a multilevel support as well
The ServiceTonic Customer Service software provides Multichannel and Multilevel features for an efficient Customer Service: quick registration of interactions, escalation to other levels of service, customer knowledge management and more aids to leverage customer satisfaction
