The contact center industry – and businesses at large – has been talking about the omni-channel contact center for some time now. In terms of adoption, however, it’s still an early day for omni-channel. To help more organizations respond to our omni-channel world with customer service solutions that address it, Genesys is working with its clients to lay out the strategies to help them get there.
During my interview last week at TMC Editor’s Day Silicon Valley with Scott Kolman, Genesys vice president of portfolio marketing, he talked about how to company is taking a more prescriptive approach in its omni-channel discussions and engagements with clients.
Omni-channel is about enabling customers to interact with your business using the communications mediums and devices of their choice – be that chat, IM, social media, video, web self-service, or whatever – and to offer a seamless experience among these channels to build customer loyalty and get a better idea of who the customers are so you can win more of their business.
Indeed, Kolman said the No. 1 driver of omni-channel engagement center adoption is the desire to get a 360-degree view of the customer. However, defining what channels to support as part of an omni-channel strategy – and what people, processes, and other business systems need to be integrated into the total solution to meet company goals – will vary by company, he said. For example, while a more basic solution on this front might meet the needs of a collections business, another type of business might want a more full-featured omni-channel customer engagement solution, he said. Genesys, which was recently named by IDC as one of the leaders in the worldwide contact center infrastructure and software market, works with its clients to help prescribe the right omni-channel customer engagements to meet their needs and requirements, he said.
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While a small percentage of the contact centers in existence are omni-channel today, Kolman said some larger enterprises – especially in the financial services, hospitality, retail, and travel industries – have already deployed omni-channel solutions.
“You don’t have a choice anymore,” said Kolman.
During our interview, Kolman also talked about the growing importance of workforce automation in the contact center/omni-channel engagement center, and he said that’s been a big focus for Genesys, which is building out its own native workforce planning, recording, and related functionality. This also dovetails into the trend of more businesses bringing non-contact centers workers from their enterprises into the customer service mix to address the requirements of more high-value customers.
Genesys, which supports both cloud and premises-based contact center/engagement center deployments, has 4,700 customers in 120 countries, 3,400 employees, and more than 25 years’ experience in the contact center space.
“This is what we do,” he said. “We’re focused on it…. And it’s in the heart of everything we do.”
Edited by
Kyle Piscioniere
