[Video] 3 Takeaways from Our Last Google Hangout About Multi-Channel Customer Service

Last week, Fonolo hosted yet another insightful Google Hangout, discussing top questions about multi-channel customer service. To save you some time, we’ve extracted video snippets of the answers to each question.

Let’s take a quick look at the panelist introductions: Ian Jacobs Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, Keith Dawson Principal Analyst at Customer Interaction Ovum, Art Rosenberg Principal Analyst at The Unified-View, Jon Arnold Independent Industry Analyst at J Arnold & Associates, and Shai Berger CEO and Co-Founder at Fonolo.

What’s the right balance of resources between channels?

CMIQ’s “Executive Report on Multi-Channel Customer Management” asked call center executives what factors are keeping them from adopting a proper multi-channel strategy. “Resources and Funding” are the top ranked reasons, which leave you thinking: how can you allocate resources for multi-channel projects on a tight budget?

Jon starts the conversation and discusses how companies need to first focus on customer needs, especially with the major change in consumer expectations.

The panel discusses how businesses can find the right balance between channels and what vendors are doing to help.

How do you adapt to the preferences of the next generation of consumers?

It seems that the younger generation is choosing newer channels for customer service in replacement for the voice channel, but a study conducted by Keith Dawson in 2012 seems to challenge that notion. Keith asked participants which channel was most successful in resolving their customer service questions on the first attempt and “Telephone Conversation” was the leading answer (even for respondents under 30).

Keith starts the conversation discussing how we can reconcile between the newer channels that the younger generation seemingly uses, to what the stats show for first call resolution?

Learn what the panel has to say.

How do you maintain a consistent experience across multiple channels?

This chart is from a report released by IQPC, “Multi-Channel Customer Management”.

One question asked was, “Are customer and transaction data integrated and passed between channels and applications?” For example, if a customer starts an order on the web and needs agent assistance, can the agent immediately see the transaction history without the customer having to repeat that information? As you can see, the results are a bit saddening: 70% of respondents answered no.

As a contributor to this report, Ian takes the floor on this question. The panel discusses how businesses can deliver a consistent experience across all channels.

Ian wraps the discussion up with a great consensus,

Paying attention to the way customers are now looking at your business is one of the keys to changing the culture. Companies are not just in an industry from the customer’s point of view … one application sits beside all and one should work the way the best of them works …

Watch this enlightening conversation unfold!