Where does outbound marketing fit into the multichannel mix?

Tips

Companies are finally getting on board with “multichannel” and investing in contact centre software that is able to unify their fragmented communication channels.

There are now a number of solutions available that simplify the management of your multichannel operation. They are designed to capture disparate inbound enquiries and send them, in a unified queue, to your agents.

However, where some of these systems struggle is with outbound capabilities. Many don’t support outbound communication at all, which obviously creates another frustrating interaction silo where valuable customer data can fall between the cracks.

The ideal situation is for your multichannel contact centre to provide inbound/outbound functionality – where outbound campaigns and subsequent inbound enquiries correlate for a substantial impact on the consistent experience. This ensures you can monitor the impact of your marketing campaigns and make any necessary changes in response to live results.

Our multichannel contact centre software, Contact, offers this fused inbound/outbound functionality giving you a 360-degree view of your channels and customers. We also support centralised (and PCI Compliant) billing so customers can easily transact between channels.

Everything can be launched and managed via one browser based interface for a comprehensive and holistic view of your customer.

Unloc chooses C3’s Fusion IVR for its ‘competitive edge’

Case Study

Unloc, a specialist in cloud-based industry solutions, is using C3’s Fusion IVR Software to develop new services for its target markets in Real Estate, Education, Healthcare, Hospitality, Banking, Insurance and Retail.

Unloc, whose name stands for Universal language of communication, specialises in Vertical Applications as Service (VaaS) solutions that improve business processes within specific industry segments.

Deploying its vertical applications worldwide is a strategy that Unloc is committed to.

The company is currently using Hosted Fusion IVR to develop a unique self-service application for its customers in the UK Real Estate market, which will be rolled out to the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Dubai.

“With Fusion IVR, it is easy to design advanced call applications and make changes to any existing services,” said Anand Babu – Product Development Manager.

“The software supports us in getting our innovative applications to market quickly, ensuring that our clients always remain one step ahead of the competition.”

Fusion is a game-changing IVR scripting tool that makes it possible to design advanced IVR services within minutes, using the intuitive drag and drop tool and extensive function (node) library to establish the call flow.

“We are all praises for Fusion IVR, for its seamless integration with third party voice and SMS gateways. We will be recommending C3 and Fusion to our own clients for voice-based self-service.”

ImpulsePay chooses C3’s Fusion IVR software for enhanced call handling capability

Case Study

ImpulsePay, the UK’s leading Payforit provider, is using C3’s Fusion IVR to develop interactive consumer assistance as the company undergoes a period of expansion, with new merchants coming on board and Payforit transactions increasing month-on-month.

The company, pioneers of the Payforit mechanism, was already using a competitor’s IVR software solution but that didn’t provide the granularity of control, or the flexibility, that ImpulsePay required as a dynamic and growing business.

“Fusion IVR offers us significant functionality, at the same time as being incredibly easy to use” says Adam Williams, Chief Operating Officer at ImpulsePay.

“This means we can quickly launch advanced voice services and change them at the click of a button. That level of flexibility is important to us as we continue to grow the business.”

With Payforit gaining real momentum, ImpulsePay has been working on new developments, such as enhanced single-click payment, which has helped merchants significantly increase their mobile revenues. The company has also been busy expanding its customer services team to ensure quality of support remains high as the business continues to grow.

“We are always working hard to make sure ImpulsePay provides the best Payforit offering available.” says Adam. “An increase in overall capacity, as well as heavy investment in our server infrastructure, means we’re able to provide the most robust Payforit solution on the market.”

ImpulsePay is deploying Fusion as a hosted service, initially to develop intelligent scripts for its customer service lines.

All hail the Siemens ISDX

Industry News & Insight

The PBX has been “dead” for years if you believe analysts in the communications industry. But with vendors who’ve made the PBX a staple in their product line finally ceasing development and support for their PBX products, the system does look finally near extinction.

Siemens, for example, has stated that they will no longer provide support on the ISDX after 2017. There will, of course, be some suppliers who can provide first line maintenance, but this will not be backed by any support from Siemens as the manufacturer.

PBX phone systems have always been one‐dimensional and unable to match the functionality and flexibility of modern IP telephony. So, replacing outdated PBX equipment is an opportunity to migrate enterprise infrastructure to IP.

Phased approach or total rip and replace?

However, there aren’t many businesses that can toss out their entire communications system and migrate to a new IP solution in one fell swoop. While the PBX is still functional and familiar to users, there is understandably a deep resistance to rip and replace.

Instead, most enterprises still see IP Telephony as an adjunct to their existing system. They plan to phase over gradually one application at a time, leveraging investment in their legacy PBX.

C3’s solutions are all TDM and SIP compliant, so leading-edge unified communication, collaboration and voice messaging technology can be deployed at any point in the migration pathway. Our open solutions help organisations benefit from new technology as well as extend the life of existing systems, driving down the total cost of ownership.

For more information about any of our products or for advice on migrating your kit to IP, please email sales@c3.co.uk.

Managing communication with the ‘always on’ student consumer

Tips

It is generally accepted that students have become more demanding as consumers since fees were raised to up to £9,000 per year.

The fact that complaints by students in England and Wales against universities rose by a quarter in 2012 to “record levels”, according to The Office of the Independent Adjudicator, goes some way support this theory.

As the higher education market becomes ever more competitive, universities are under pressure to act more like commercial entities and carve out a distinctive niche for themselves as individual institutions. Part of this involves a rethink around customer service delivery and reconfiguring communication channels so they reflect the preferences of users, e.g. by making support staff and tutors available over social media to engage with students.

Beyond transactional messaging

This new generation of consumers demand personalised interactions and tailored experiences when dealing with any organisation. And when individuals want direct interaction with an institution, they demand an almost immediate reply. But this is where the gap lies: between how current communication channels are being operated against students’ expectations of service delivery.

As it stands, most higher education institutions still treat email, SMS, social media and web chat as separate entities, run by different groups with individual objectives. There is no single view of the customer and no record of their cross-channel interactions with the institution. Frustratingly, this means your customers have to repeat information as they switch between channels because support staff have no centralised CRM record for them.

Getting the right technology in place that provides this single view of the customer is critical to fostering long term customer engagement.

Contact is a powerful multichannel contact centre solution that enables organisations to keep pace with the new ‘always on’ consumer.

This unique solution streamlines all your media channels (voice, email, SMS, social media, web chat) into a single, fully integrated multi-channel contact centre. The browser-based system provides queuing, routing and monitoring across these multiple channels, as well as extensive reporting capabilities.

Every enquiry is logged, irrespective of channel, in the integrated CRM. Preserving the history of these interactions makes it possible for your staff to follow students as they move between communication channels and manage interactions as they move from, say, social to email.

By monitoring cross-channel interactions and consolidating this valuable customer information, your support staff can assess the strengths and weaknesses of your customer-facing channels and make any necessary improvements, whilst your marketing team is able to analyse the cross-channel data for any themes or emerging trends that can be capitalised on. Ultimately, your organisation is better placed to deliver relevant and personalised services to customers.

Yes, it’s another pitch for the multi channel contact centre

Call Handling, Industry News & Insight

The phrase ‘multi-channel communications is so ubiquitous that no one really pays attention to it any more. It’s become one of those overused techy phrases that  can, if used without due care and attention, induce a semi-coma state.

Well, WAKE UP! The phrase is used a good few times here – but it’s for your own good!

For many organisations “multi-channel communications” has been endlessly discussed; with plans made, heads scratched, Facebook pages opened etc.

However, very few companies have – and bear with me here – an integrated multichannel communication strategy; that is to say one which integrates multiple channels, and uses sophisticated tools in contact routing and handling. For example most organisations have no means of tracking and reporting on their non-voice communication channels.

Instead, the majority of organisations handle each channel independently of each other, on an informal basis. This approach might work where enquiries come in small volumes and employees can make up for bad processes. But it’s not scalable, or even sustainable in the long term.

Research published by ContactBabel in 2012 revealed that over 17% of interactions handled by UK contact centres were through email, web chat and social media.

In the last few years there has been a sharp rise in non-voice communication, led by email (which has risen from 10% to 15% of interactions) but also supported by jumps in web chat and social media.

Customers expect consistent treatment and quality of service across all these channels. But without a comprehensive system to track enquiries from every media, making this happen in reality is hard work.

With many traditional voice platforms reaching end-of-life, now is a good time to seriously consider a multi-channel communication platform that can provide routing, reporting and performance tracking across all your communication channels.

In this competitive environment service is a genuine differentiator. So, although the technology may not be new, the impetus to actually do something with it is.

Fusion Contact is C3’s multichannel contact centre platform. It is a browser-based solution that simplifies the management of interactions across all communication channels (voice, email, web chat and social networks) with universal routing rules.

Fusion Contact enables your customers to make contact with you using their preferred method,  always receiving a consistent, well-informed service no matter which channel they use. The system facilitates the rapid deployment of new applications; helps you improve customer service across your distributed operations, and also supports the flexible working requirements of your staff who are able to login to the system remotely.

We offer a range of hosted solutions, which remove the constraints of capital expenditure and provide operational flexibility and agility.