Consumers are constantly on digital channels and devices throughout the day. They seek proactive service, personalized interactions, and connected experiences - and want to engage with businesses at their preferred place and time. Businesses need to get two things right:

• Their communication channel

• Their contact center solution

According to The State of Customer Conversations report by Smart Communications, 61% of consumers find getting information through the wrong channels frustrating. Other reasons for consumers’ frustration include irrelevant messages (58%), high frequency of calls (54%), and lack of personalization (41%). 

The report also highlights personalization and timeliness as critical factors in establishing customer trust.

In an omnichannel environment, your contact center solution has a pivotal role. It leverages digital and traditional communication channels to guide customers through critical processes (pre-sales, order delivery, service, feedback, etc). 

To maximize the utility of your contact center, you need to understand:

1. What do customers truly want?

2. What is the best-suited communication channel (Voice Call, Website, Email, SMS, and Push Notification)?

3. What is the right contact center solution for you?

For example, suppose Voice Call is your preferred communication channel. In that case, your contact center communication should enable interactive, two-way conversations that establish customer trust and brand loyalty among customers.

What matters to customers?

By relying on the wrong communication channel and contact center solution, you may address issues that are not strictly based on customers' needs and preferences. In general, customer expectations fall into three categories:

1. Speed and flexibility (responsiveness).

2. Reliability and transparency (trusted and clear communication).

3. Relevance and personalization.

Identify user personas to choose the right contact center solution

Everything starts with identifying key customer attributes and characteristics. You should segment customers based on their digital behavior to determine your engagement strategy and the relevant contact center solution.

According to Mckinsey, there are four key personas, each of which likes specific digital touchpoints to interact with businesses. 

• Digital by lifestyle: These individuals are quintessential omnichannel customers who are inseparable from the digital ecosystem and have much longer screen time. Be it entertainment, shopping, healthcare, or finance; they depend entirely on digital channels for recommendations, feedback, complaints, reviews, purchase, etc. 

• Digital by choice: Individuals who selectively indulge in digital. They love consuming content on Netflix or YouTube, prefer online check-in to offline check-in, rely entirely on online shopping, etc. They can switch between digital and offline channels based on their requirements.

• Digital by need: Digital interaction is not a part of their lifestyle, and they go beyond their comfort zone to communicate with brands on digital channels. 

• Offline society: Individuals comfortable staying in the non-digital world and prefer in-person communication. They physically visit bank branches, shop in brick-and-mortar stores, and rarely indulge in digital communication.

For example, to engage customers who spend significant time on screens (digital by lifestyle), you can rely on self-service tools or chatbots to address queries on order cancellation, device installation, subscription plan changes, etc.

Create intent-based customer journeys to identify your contact center solution further

Once you have zeroed in on your user personas and communication channel (let's pick Voice Call for the sake of this article), you should design end-to-end contact center journeys and identify checkpoints where you can have transparent, contextual, and considerate conversations - keeping the customers' pain points and surroundings in mind.

The contact center solution should help you overcome deep-seated assumptions in your system. For instance, some senior managers believe that customer care should attempt to close tickets in one session. However, this approach often misses opportunities to build long-lasting customer relationships. 

Examples from different ecosystems 

Insurance ecosystem: A person was involved in a car accident. He is feeling guilty and seeks more empathetic treatment from the insurance agent. If the agent is too focused on first-call resolution, the customer might feel hard done and leave the conversation dissatisfied.

Healthcare ecosystem: A person orders her medicine from the Centro Healthcare app. It’s a weekday, and she is busy with work and gets a call from the delivery agent for address confirmation. There can be two scenarios here:

• She sees an unverified caller ID with no brand name or logo. As she is busy, she might be unable to pick up the call. 

• She sees a verified caller ID with an accurate brand name, logo, and the call reason. She immediately identifies the caller and takes the call to confirm her address. 

Ensure purposeful customer communication with your contact center solution.

Most people today use multiple channels to buy a product or avail of a service. A consistent communication experience keeps them invested in the journey. 

A classic example is an e-commerce journey. A customer searches for a product and selects the most suitable e-commerce portal from SERPs. He connects with a live agent for queries regarding product pricing or discrepancies. Once the order is placed, he gets a call from the delivery agent to confirm the address (on the day of delivery). For some reason, he decides to return the product and schedules a pickup. He again gets a call from the delivery agent to confirm his availability. 

During this entire journey, even if one channel delivers a poor customer experience—let's say the customer doesn't recognize the call from the delivery agent or sees a suspicious number instead of a genuine brand name—a business's reputation can suffer.

Now think of a ride-hailing app that:

• Ranks well on SERPs.

• Has a user-friendly app along with highly active social media handles.

• Has a high resolution rate over chat.

But if it doesn’t have a Verified Business Caller ID (no brand name, logo, or verification badges), customer communication will fall flat over voice calls.

This is what seamless customer communication looks like

Jai is hungry and orders a walnut cookie through a food delivery app. The bakery prepares the order, and the agent delivers it. He gives Jai a call to confirm the address. Jai sees a verified and branded video caller ID and promptly picks up the call to confirm his location. The order is delivered without any hiccups! 

Enable trusted, transparent, and timely communication.

Often, customers do not answer calls from contact centers (irrespective of the industry) because: 

• The caller ID appears suspicious (For example - there is no brand name or logo, or the brand name is misspelled).

• They don't know the caller’s intention (why contact centers are calling them in the first place).

• They fear being scammed by an imposter. 

Therefore, you must make your voice calls look trustworthy, branded, and meaningful so customers can pick them up without hesitation. With a solution like Truecaller Verified Business Caller ID, contact centers can give their Caller ID an authentic makeover with the green screen, non-editable brand name & logo, verified business badge, category tags, and call reason. 

By displaying your call reason, you can customize your caller ID based on your business use cases. For example, you can show different call reasons like:

• We’re calling you for course enrollment 

• Call regarding your order delivery 

• Complaint resolution call

• Call for your health risk assessment 

• Contacting you for your service inquiry 

Augment your Voice Calls with advanced communication features.

You can add a layer of brand identity to your calls and deliver a lively calling experience to users by enabling Video Caller ID for your contact center numbers (shown below). 

You can leave a lasting impression on users by playing your branded video even on the After Call Screen.

The value of Voice Calls as a communication channel is not confined to specific industries and aligns with the evolution of customer preferences and behaviors. Therefore, your contact center solution should elevate the voice call experience for customers—which Truecaller Verified Business Caller ID has done for 2,500+ businesses.

Want to empower your contact center communication and enhance customer experience? Reach us at business@truecaller.com.