A study by Frost & Sullivan found over three-quarters of mid-sized European contact centres believed that connecting customer journeys would have the most immediate impact on their business. Yet, only 2% had full cross-channel integration, with the rest enjoying little or no linkage.

So, why’s that figure so surprisingly low? And what practical steps can we take to ensure a single view of channel-hopping customers?

Omnichannel rush

When it comes to going digital organisations can’t afford to hang around. Even before making a purchase, 59% of customers say personalisation based on past interactions is very important to win their business. For example, sending unique offers for an abandoned item in a cart, or offering products and services that complement another purchase they’ve made can make all the difference.

Once engaged omnichannel shoppers on average spend 4% more in-store and 10% more online than single-channel customers. That propensity to buy increases for every additional channel they use.

And therein lies the root of the problem. In the scramble to launch digital services, many contact centres unintentionally fall into a fragmented IT approach based on siloed products with no consideration to how they can be bolted together. As a result, customers often get lost or have to repeat themselves.

Phased migration approach

The key to success is enabling automated channels and agents to pinpoint customers’ exact positions in their journeys and instantly understand their needs. Achieving that may involve linking departments like marketing, sales and fulfilment. This requires a unified platform providing a consolidated view of customers, resources and interactions across all channels – phone, chat, email, mobile and social.

However, customer experience (CX) transformation is not always as simple as planning a greenfield project. Most organisations cannot rip and replace existing contact centre technology and are looking for a phased approach. With this in mind, PureCloud was designed from the ground-up so customers can move to the cloud and migrate channels at a pace that best suits their business.

What good looks like

When you join-up channels you start to unlock better insight into customer journeys.

Kiwi.com is a great example. The online travel business found it hard to add agents and features. Tracking basic metrics, such as average handle times and agent productivity, wasn’t possible. Downtime was becoming more frequent.

 Used by nearly 1,550 agents concurrently, across multiple countries, the open APIs inherent in PureCloud enable Kiwi.com to pull data into wallboards, business intelligence systems and workforce management tools. Now, when agents answer interactions, they immediately know who the customer is, based on context collected from the IVR and database, which is presented in the agent desktop.

The results make impressive reading. Sales growth has doubled year-over-year and, because agents can multitask and serve more customers, costs and headcount have stayed the same. If passengers are stuck at the airport and need urgent assistance, agents can take a phone call, search for an alternative flight and update an e-ticket via email, all at the same time.

Moreover, Kiwi.com can leverage PureCloud to unify chat, SMS, video, social media and proactive outbound dialling into a single agent desktop – connecting even more customer journeys.

 Learn more about hot CX trends and see how PureCloud is helping organisations like yours digitally transform.