Customer engagement Customer service has always been an important focus for all businesses. But with the move to digital and mobile, customer expectations have soared and customer experience is now a critical measure of successful engagement.
Delivering a seamless, integrated experience regardless of the means a customer may choose to use is at the heart of successful customer engagement.
Point solutions for CRM, call centre or website forms have evolved to provide integration across all channels including phone, internet, e-mail, text, social and bricks & mortar.
Unified Communications - UC has provided the platform upon which these solutions have been built. UC describes the integration of multiple communication streams (voice, video & data) over an IP network onto one platform – e.g. into CRM or service desk applications.
At the core of UC is Unified Messaging, whereby messages are streamed into a single inbox or service queue regardless of coming from voice, e-mail, web, social or chat messaging.
UC extends unified messaging further by facilitating collaboration across business processes, so rather than simply a single inbox, participants in a process can collaborate on a problem and reach a decision faster than by traditional means. “Presence” is a key concept in UC. Presence aware systems allow those within your network (business or personal) to be aware of your availability to be contacted. Are you at your desk, in a meeting, on the phone, on your mobile – or simply in a “do not disturb” moment? Your presence status means that you control your availability to be contacted, and people can see your availability. As an example of UC in action, consider the following scenario. A key customer has contacted the call centre and cancelled a large order that is in production. The call centre enters the issue into the CRM system with an alert to sales, production, inventory and shipping who all need to come up with a response plan. The presence aware messaging system will send an IM to everyone notifying them of the problem, and at the same time creates an online meeting space. As individuals come available they are able to join the space, and as they talk or chat online they can share ERP or CRM screens – or invite substitutes for those who are busy. The forum allows a collaborative decision to be reached as quickly as possible.
Unified Communication is in itself a subset of Unified Collaboration which is the “end game” in process collaboration across remotely located workers.
