The need for organisations to meet their customers’ need to interact across multiple, different channels of communications has been increasing for several years as users adopt video, chat, email, SMS and social channels in addition to mobile and fixed-line voice. What’s needed is a flexible, user-controlled, context-aware and easy to operate environment to handle all the different formats. Ideally, this should be able to support interactions that traverse more than one channel.
The good news is that Converged Contact Solutions are already here to make this a reality and bring together all the methods of contact that customers use with fixed-mobile convergence, productivity tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, contact centre functions, marketing automation and many other systems. The technology is the enabler here, maximising the benefit of Converged Contact Solutions is actually more about the people and business, as Iain Sinnott, Head of International Carriers at Enreach for Service Providers, explains.
“For the business customer, benefits include making better use of employees’ time and simplifying hybrid working to enhance the employee experience,” he says. “Converged Contact also maximises your ROI through enabling more integration of technology which enables improved customer service. We see this powering increased sales revenue, decreased customer churn, increased staff productivity and decreased staff churn.”
Sinnott adds that the benefits don’t end there. Converged Contact Solutions can also enable businesses to reduce their operating cost and their carbon footprint while increasing net promoter score (NPS) and decreasing social media negativity.
For Converged Contact Solutions and service providers there are also substantial benefits. “Service providers can improve customer loyalty by selling more than just comms or IT systems,” confirms Sinnott.
“They can upsell and cross-sell Converged Contact Solutions, delivering tangible benefits and ROI. This enables them to compete more effectively and to build new revenue streams without having to start a revolution. In addition, they can increase average revenue per user and extend their average customer tenure rates.”
While the end game of Converged Contact Solutions may seem an impossible goal that is very hard to achieve for many enterprises, Sinnott believes that a carefully thought-out strategy will lead to success. “We’re typically working with service providers across Europe right now to shorten the journey between theory and success,” he says. “We advise starting small, with achievable wins and then building on those. In this way, customers can see real advantages and measure their progress towards the ultimate goal.”
Enreach for Service Providers has a proposition for partners to help them and their customers access some of the immediate benefits of converged contact. A single desktop and mobile application can deliver a range of easily-deployable, market-proven and attractive services. In addition, as a committed partner-friendly vendor, service providers can be assured of a range of white-label options, full-branding and customer ownership.
“Through Enreach’s buy-and-build strategy, we have been working intensely on our Converged Contact Solutions, bringing together some of the best brains and technologies in the region,” says Sinnott. “The portfolio brings to service providers some of the extensive market expertise within the Enreach group, including unified communications, contact centre innovations, intelligent chat solutions, mobile-first heritage, core telephony experience, Microsoft, IT and CRM integration expertise. The bridge between IT and comms has finally and truly been created.”
