Acting with Integrity Towards Your Customers with Omnichannel Engagement

Integrity Equals Omnichannel Engagement

The meaning of integrity has its roots in ancient Greco-Roman philosophy and ethics, implying a sense of fullness or wholeness in personal and professional relationships. For those businesses wishing to show integrity toward their customers, the extrapolation is that they take on a sense of completeness.

Yet, for those businesses that fail to offer their customers what is known as an omnichannel engagement experience, there is a sense of incompleteness—or we could even say a lack of integrity. These are pretty hard-hitting words and something that many may not want to hear. But the reality is that your customers (and prospects) cannot achieve fullness in their relationship unless you engage with them through the engagement channels of their choice.

It isn’t voice, email, self-service, social, or live web chat. It’s all of the above. For digital engagement, it isn’t simply the web or mobile; it also includes chatbots—both text and audio. And customers expect personalized, contextually aware journeys with integrated back-end systems. Failing deliver this level of customer experience shows a lack of integrity on the part of a business.

Omnichannel as a Differentiator

Digital engagement certainly is the name of the game today. Thirty-five percent of interactions take place on digital, which will overtake voice in two years. However, while voice will diminish as a share of engagement in the contact call center, it remains a preferred option across all demographic groups. For example, millennials even identify voice as a required option. Recognizing the importance of omnichannel engagement, call centers are turning to multiple technologies that enable them to deliver engagement across numerous channels.

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are struggling to compete in this omnichannel world. Nearly one-half feel the always-on nature of the digital economy requires that they must be “always available” to deal with work-related issues. However, the digitization of the economy and technology disruption offers SMBs the opportunity to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and in the case of customer relationship integrity, a chance to offer omnichannel engagement ahead others in their space.

One aspect that is important for SMBs to remember when they develop an omnichannel engagement strategy is that human engagement remains critical—whether voice, live web chat, email, or other methods. Despite a growth in self-service preferences and engagement delivery, an astounding 83 percent of customers indicate speaking with a person will always be an important part of a customer engagement channel. This sets a really high bar for SMBs that have limited budgets and time. Setting up and managing technologies that enable integrated omnichannel engagement is outside the realm of possibilities for many SMBs. Further, even if that were the case, staffing them with top-notch customer service and sales agents is just as difficult.

SMBs Use Omnichannel to Look and Act Big

The upside is that technology disruption now makes it possible to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience to customers. Additionally, SMBs can scale their capabilities by tapping external third-party providers and solutions such as Davinci Live Receptionists and Live Web Chat. SMBs can purchase the total number of voice, email, and live web chat interactions they need on a monthly basis, scaling those up and down to meet their business requirements. At the same time, they assume no overhead acquisition and management costs for the technology nor staffing. Under this model, SMBs are able to act with integrity towards their customers and look and behave like their much larger counterparts. 

About Patrick Spencer

Patrick Spencer (Ph.D.) is the President and Founder of TIRO Communications that helps companies develop, build, and manage content, customer, advocacy, and demand-gen programs. Included in its offerings is TIRO Cognition Insights, a data analytics tool that enables B2C and B2B businesses to pinpoint what their customers and competitors’ customers are saying and to identify corresponding actionable product, services, competitive, sales, and marketing intelligence.

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Website: www.tirocommunications.com