Less than 30% of contact centres deliver multichannel communications

New research has revealed just 27% of contact centres believe their agents can process enquires seamlessly between channels.

Customer experience provider Genesys, which surveyed over 200 call centre managers in the UK to examine multichannel usage and social media adoption, found that alternative channels are on the rise, such as mobile apps (17%), web enquiry forms (21%) and web chat (12%).

Surprisingly, social media is being used as a secondary channel by 9% of users, with Twitter rated higher than other networks. The survey found that few contact centre agents are turning to social media because over 60% did not view it as a viable channel or regard it as a PR tool (37%).

Additionally, 70% of respondents felt that using the same staff across more than one channel reduced staff attrition.

Keith Wilkinson from Genesys said: “Important new developments in communications technology are already available to easily allow contact centres to process their customer enquiries seamlessly, but time spent on workforce management and skills assessing is equally important – dealing with social media and webchat are very different skills from talking on the phone.”