Companies going international is no longer a rarity saved for tech and e-commerce giants. Today, it's almost a business norm, which applies to both large organizations and SMEs in various fields.
"With online businesses today, you can see companies that are less than one year old and are already present in 20 different markets," notes Thomas Laboulle, Toku CEO.
International business presence also means going global with contact center operations.
"The ability to provide the same level of service to customers, regardless of where they are in the world, is more critical than ever with customer experience becoming a strategic differentiator for businesses," Laboulle notes. However, this can be quite a challenge if a company's contact center solution can't cater to its growing needs.
What are the key trends to look out to when it comes to scaling contact center operations in a multinational environment?
The Multinational Contact Center: Consolidated, Integrated, Omni-Channel
According to the CCaaS Gartner Magic Quadrant report for 2021, a growing number of customer service organizations want to consolidate disparate business tools and move forward with a single supplier.
This is closely related to the first trend Laboulle mentions: centralization.
"Any business today that has a multinational presence is looking to have a contact center that is covering its entire geographical range," Laboulle says. "To avoid an inconsistent costumer experience between regions, companies need a single, centralized solution that covers their entire landscape."
The second significant trend Laboulle mentions is integration with third party customer data management tools.
"Companies used to be okay with 'copy paste’ and the use of Excel sheets, but that's no longer the case," Laboulle notes. "Today, companies look for deep integrations with their CRM and ticketing systems."
The third trend is, naturally, omni-channel capabilities.
"We see more and more scenarios where, for one single use case, multiple channels will be used in a mix, with voice as the main backbone. A customer interaction can start with a chatbot, go to a human agent and then end with an SMS or an email," Laboulle explains.
