What is a multichannel contact center?

What is a contact center? Specifically, what is a multichannel contact center? The definition can be confusing, especially when comparing an omnichannel to a multichannel contact center.

While there may be hundreds of thousands of call centers and contact centers worldwide, each one will operate differently to better serve its industry, customers, and strategic objectives.

As the name suggests, a multichannel customer contact center is a communication hub offering support through various channels. These might include phone, social media, email, live chat, SMS, and so on. Providing so many contact options means customers can get in touch via their preferred method, making it easier and more convenient to get the support they need whenever they need it.

Multichannel contact center example

Multichannel contact centers allow businesses to communicate more effectively with customers. Integrating multiple platforms means you can provide a seamless experience across channels, bringing together your communication efforts to maximize consistency, engagement, and customer satisfaction.

For example, a customer might call your phone line with a query. While resolving their issue, the agent notices the number they’re calling on doesn’t match the number on record. The agent checks if they have the right information on file, and it turns out the customer has recently acquired a new cell phone number. Knowing this, the agent updates the information in the system to ensure the customer continues receiving SMS communications.

Proactively managing customer support in this way empowers contact centers to go above and beyond expectations. By providing an enhanced customer experience, you can ensure your communication strategy is effective for the business and your target market.

Omnichannel vs. multichannel contact center: What is the difference?

Comparing a multichannel vs. omnichannel contact center is complicated, as they work in similar ways. Both use multiple channels to engage with customers, and both have agents operating across platforms to provide support and assistance. The key difference between the two solutions is how these systems are integrated — in other words, how much data each platform shares with the other.

Let’s say a customer contacts you via live chat. Their original query has escalated, and now they want to speak to someone over the phone. With omnichannel contact centers, you can easily move from one channel to another and keep sharing the same information across channels. Likewise, if you need to pass a customer on to a different representative, all of their data can be sent to avoid customers repeating themselves or agents searching for information over multiple platforms.

Both models aim to enhance customer engagement but differ in execution and the quality of experience they deliver. Omnichannel is about integration and consistency, making it customer-centric. Multichannel focuses on offering various communication options without connecting them, making it more channel-centric.

Essential channels and features every multichannel cloud contact center should have

For a multichannel contact center to operate successfully, it must have some key channels and features.

Phone

In a McKinsey survey of more than 3,500 consumers, participants of all ages confirmed that phone calls were their most preferred method of customer support. Digital channels may be gaining in popularity, but one thing’s for sure: Phone support is here to stay.

Calling a company is one of the easiest and quickest ways of resolving queries and answering questions, especially for niche or complicated issues that can’t be dealt with by chatbots or lengthy instant messaging exchanges. Prioritizing phone support will ensure you can handle high-traffic volumes to maximize efficiency and customer satisfaction and offer immediate assistance to people of all ages.

Email

Email support offers unparalleled convenience for those strapped for time or with less-urgent queries. Customers can fire off a message without waiting in a long queue or engaging in live chat. This allows them to return to the conversation at a time that suits them and resolves their query whenever they’re ready.

Email is also a powerful communication tool for businesses. Contact center agents can categorize email queries according to priority level, ensuring that the right people deal with urgent cases promptly. Marketing teams can regularly send out email campaigns to keep customers informed about the latest promotions, products, and updates, which often results in increased sales and revenue.

Live chat

Live chat is an incredibly handy tool for customers who prefer real-time, low-effort interaction. Customers can start an online chat from anywhere, anytime, on any device. This flexibility means customers can multitask while getting their query resolved. In today’s fast-paced world, being able to continue with online and offline activities makes live chat a popular option for people of all ages.

SMS

SMS texts are a great way to stay in regular contact with your customers. SMS messaging is quick and easy, whether you’re sending out discounts, highlighting new promotions and products, or updating customers on the status of their orders.

Vonage Business Communications offers powerful SMS features, allowing you to set up automated messages, distinguish yourself with a recognizable Sender ID, manage opt-out lists, enhance the security and delivery of your communications, optimize compliance, and much more.

Social media

Over 5 billion people worldwide currently use social media, and that number is projected to rise to more than 6 billion by 2028. So it’s little wonder that more and more customers are turning to social media to communicate with brands.

Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook can instantly connect you to customers no matter where or what device they use. This makes communication quick and convenient for customers, whether they choose to engage by posting, commenting, or direct messaging. People value communicating publicly with a business, ensuring others see how a company deals with questions, complaints, and issues.

Dashboards

No matter which platforms you choose to use, every multichannel contact center tool needs one critical feature: agent dashboards. This gives teams a centralized visual of all communication channels so they can manage phone, email, social media, SMS, and live chat support all in one place.

Call routing

Call routing is an essential tool for ensuring customer queries are directed to the correct department. This may be based on agent availability, language skills, expertise, and other factors. Your multichannel contact center platform must handle call routing effectively and allow teams to adjust quickly and easily whenever needed.

AI and automation

Using artificial intelligence and automated tools will improve your customer service. Chatbots and virtual receptionists can field common questions and queries to free up agents for more-complex matters, while automating responses and workflows can save time, reduce errors, and deliver a more consistent customer experience.

Integrations

Integrating your current platforms and applications is necessary for your multichannel contact center solution. Your chosen tool should integrate with CRM systems, company databases, and any other project management solutions essential to your business's everyday operation. This ensures continuity of your workflows and customer service, preventing disruptions and keeping productivity and efficiency levels high.

Analytics and reporting

Real-time analytics helps you monitor performance, make data-driven decisions, and take a proactive approach to customer support. This includes key metrics like wait times, first-contact resolution rates, customer sentiment, and more. These key performance indicators can then be analyzed through advanced visuals, reports, and dashboards to ensure all stakeholders can access accurate information whenever needed.

Benefits of multichannel communications

Managing various communication solutions isn’t challenging when you have an effective multichannel contact center platform. Offering a range of customer support brings many benefits for both businesses and customers, including:

Enhanced efficiency

Multichannel contact centers allow businesses to support customers in various ways, but they also unlock several productivity and efficiency benefits. Agents can avoid mistakes, duplicated efforts, and manual, time-consuming tasks with easy access to centralized data. This gives them the power to act quickly, manage queries, and focus on complex issues. Improved collaboration across teams allows businesses to handle more inquiries and tasks with fewer resources, creating an efficient environment that keeps up with the fast-paced demands of modern customer interactions.

Improved customer experience

Accessing support via their preferred channel provides ultimate ease and convenience for your customers. No matter where they are or what time of day it is, it’s important that people can get in touch with your business and receive the same consistent experience.

This makes your customer support more accessible and allows you to offer speedier resolutions and more personalized messaging. Quick response times and consistent service build trust and satisfaction, creating smoother journeys prioritizing customer needs and expectations. This approach enhances convenience and fosters loyalty, as customers feel valued and understood.

Increased engagement

The more opportunities customers have to connect with your business, the more likely they are to engage with your brand. Meeting customers wherever they are means a higher chance of interactions, and engaged customers tend to provide feedback, make repeat purchases, and advocate for the brand.

Using analytics to track customer sentiment can also help you fine-tune your strategy and encourage communication to nurture long-term relationships, develop trust and loyalty, and drive growth.

Reduced operational costs

AI, automation, and technology are key in handling repetitive tasks. Whether it’s answering FAQs or routing inquiries, taking advantage of technology reduces the need for extensive staff resources and minimizes the risk of mistakes. Minimizing the strain on support terms means less downtime and lower turnover, all of which contribute to cost savings.

Challenges of multiple communication channels

Taking a multichannel approach to your communications will require time and technological adjustments, but with the right tools and careful planning, you can operate a successful multichannel contact center.

Implementing technology: The initial set-up of a multichannel customer contact center demands a lot of time, effort, and resources. This implementation phase can be overwhelming, particularly when integrating multiple platforms and ensuring they work together seamlessly.

Additionally, the rapid pace at which technology evolves makes it challenging for businesses to keep up with constant updates and new equipment. Staff training is another crucial hurdle; employees must be equipped to use technology effectively to deliver exceptional service.

To overcome these challenges, it is crucial to choose a multichannel contact center platform designed for scalability and ease of use. Regular training sessions and staying informed about industry advancements can also help ensure your system remains efficient and up-to-date.

Finding the right channels: Not all channels are created equal. Some customers prefer email or phone calls when reaching you, while others would rather use social media or chat platforms. Understanding where your audience spends their time requires research and a deep dive into customer preferences. This can be a time-intensive process, but it’s essential for optimizing communication strategies.

A multichannel contact center solution with analytics capabilities can provide insights into customer behaviors, helping businesses pinpoint the most-effective platforms. Combining this data with customer feedback ensures resources are allocated to the most important channels.

Inconsistent customer experience: Delivering a seamless customer experience across multiple channels requires constant monitoring. Disconnected systems, fragmented approaches to staff training, and inconsistent information can create a fractured experience that frustrates customers. For instance, a customer might receive one answer via email and a completely different one over the phone.

To resolve this, businesses should choose a multichannel contact center solution that offers high-quality features in a single platform. This ensures that teams can access the correct information and provide a consistent service. Regular, standardized training helps all teams and employees align their approaches, enhancing customer satisfaction.

4 best practices for setting up a multichannel contact center

Multichannel contact centers don’t appear overnight. Researching and planning how you’ll run your support center may take some time but will ultimately pay dividends. Here are some recommended best practices to help get you started.

1. Choose your channels

A “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach is a waste of time and money for you and your customers. The truth is that some channels appeal to certain demographics and industries, while others simply don’t. For example, if your business rents vacation cottages to older generations, they’re unlikely to spend much time on TikTok. Your efforts are much better spent optimizing the channels they are familiar with, such as phone or email support.

2. Implement the right software

The right technology makes all the difference in running a successful contact center. You’ll need a solution that can integrate all your chosen channels, such as voice, live chat, SMS, etc., and provide agents with efficient dashboards, automated features, and analytics.

Make sure the software can also scale with the business, with easy and affordable options for adding extra channels, agents, and capacity as your operations grow.

3. Focus on training

Your tools are only as good as the people using them. Implementing various platforms will require considerable staff training, which needs to be ongoing as technology updates and improves.

Focus on delivering a standardized training program that can be taught across channels to maintain service consistency, and then create specialized modules for each platform – e.g., phone support agents will need to understand call routing, while email teams will have a separate tool for automated email campaigns.

4. Monitor KPIs

The only way to judge how well your multichannel contact center is doing is to measure performance and KPIs. Tracking these figures over many platforms can be overwhelming without a centralized solution or dashboard, so choose a multichannel contact center tool with advanced analytics and real-time monitoring.

This means you can easily view important metrics like response times, first-contact resolution rates (FCR), and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) at the touch of a button — information essential for making data-driven decisions and timely adjustments.

Multichannel contact center pricing

Multichannel contact center solutions often work on a tiered subscription-based model. This gives you flexibility when scaling your operations, enabling you to add channels, users, and capacity as needed.

A pricing structure like this also means you only pay for the features you use. Don’t want video call functionality? No need to add it to your plan. Fancy trialing a virtual receptionist for a couple of months? You can easily add and remove extra tools without incurring extensive set-up costs or being locked into a long-term contract.

Vonage Business Communications offers a range of plans to suit your needs. Whether you’re looking for a simple setup with our core features or a subscription with all the bells and whistles, we provide various options to help you find a plan that works for you..

The future of multichannel contact centers

The number of multichannel contact centers is on the rise, and for good reason. With competition fiercer than ever and technology developing rapidly, customer engagement with brands is quickly diversifying. Whether through voice calls, live chat, or social media, customers expect and deserve excellent customer service.

Multichannel contact centers that can offer unified, seamless, and consistent experiences across all customer touchpoints will give businesses the edge over competitors with limited and fragmented communications. AI and machine learning will be a key to this experience, enabling real-time personalization by analyzing customer behavior and preferences.

Emerging channels like voice assistants and metaverse platforms are also gaining traction, offering new and innovative ways to connect with customers.

Deliver an unbeatable customer experience with one of the top multichannel contact center solutions

Every customer interaction matters. Creating a seamless, effective experience will build trust and loyalty in your customers, who will associate your brand with quick, consistent, and exceptional service.

Using AI, real-time analytics, and advanced integrations within a multichannel contact center tool will empower your business to deliver the top-quality service your customers deserve.

Vonage offers all of these features and more, ensuring you can leverage the latest technology to position your organization as a leader in customer service. Contact our team of experts today to learn how Vonage can help your business enhance communications, boost efficiency, and drive growth.