Ineffective monitoring, routing and control of various customer contact channels have led to poor customer experiences in South Africa.

Enterprises must combine multimedia communication channels to enable better management and a better quality of customer experience, says customer communication company Interactive Intelligence strategic consultant Deon Scheepers.

Customer services are changing, as more people use social media communication channels, mobile applications and self- service portals, along with traditional channels, to access services and interact with enterprises, he says.

Customers also use whichever interaction channel is convenient for them at a certain time and increasingly expect enterprises to have access to information of all their interactions with a company on all channels used.

“A proper multichannel strategy forms the basis of exerting corporate control by enabling companies to consolidate channels and add new communication channels in the future while ensuring oversight and consistent service quality,” he says.

Contact centres, as established and well-managed customer interaction channels, are suitable cores for a multichannel strategy.

However, companies must aim to make individual customer information available to service agents, regardless of the customer interaction channel used. This requires companies to link their business information systems with their customer interaction systems, explains Scheepers.

Self-service is a growing interaction channel, partly because customer service does not depend on service agents.

However, a common finding of the 2013 Interactive Intelligence Customer Experience Survey is that self-service channels must be streamlined and monitored, as there is limited feedback on the quality of self-service and limited iterative improvement of the channel.

“It is important for companies to measure the performance of their customer interaction channels to improve on customer experience, which will help them retain existing and gain new customers.

Customer experience is a growing factor that distinguishes competitive businesses in an industry. Measuring customer experiences and implementing an overarching customer interaction strategy is a necessity for most companies to meet the behavioural and generational changes unfolding in the market, with more clients wanting to interact with an enterprise over the channel that they prefer and expecting high levels of service, regardless of channel,” explains Scheepers.

Enterprises can also use an intelligent multichannel contact centre to automati- cally route calls, emails, short text messages or social media dialogues to the most suit- able service agent or support employee to enable quick and effective resolution of queries.

“Developing and making customer profiles available to service agents, regardless of the channel used, is very important in improving customer service, as a common frustration is that customers must repeat their details and problem to each service agent that they talk to, every time they contact the company.”

Integrated customer information systems and contact centre routing systems can help to automatically route customer interactions according to agent skills and providing agents with all the information of a client to address customer concerns correctly and in a reasonable timeframe.

This will boost customer experience and improve brand loyalty in a world defined by individual preference and choice, concludes Scheepers.