Delivering on Digital Self-Service: Why Success Starts from the Inside Out

The ways in which customers communicate with businesses is changing. This year, digital channel interactions are expected to overtake voice interactions for the first time, indicating a shift in customer expectations. To optimize the customer experience utilizing the channels customers want to use, companies must have digital self-service options. However, digital self-service goes far deeper than simply adding channels; it requires omnichannel strategies that start from the inside out.

At Calabrio, we see firsthand how the introduction of new channels is changing the customer experience. Contact center agents interact with customers via phone, chat, text, email, social and more. And customers expect a consistent, quality experience, no matter where they are. If companies haven’t laid the right groundwork, they risk frustrating customers and sabotaging the very loyalty they’re trying to earn.

The big question is: are companies really meeting digital self-service expectations?

To find out, we surveyed more than 1,000 marketing and customer experience leaders in the U.S. and U.K. Today, we released the findings in our new report, The Danger of Digital: Why digital self-service without true omnichannel strategies risks the entire customer experience in Nashville at our annual U.S. user conference, Calabrio Customer Connect (C3). And the results are surprising.

Providing a quality experience across all channels is high on the priority list, and 93 percent of respondents think it’s important. But only 45 percent feel their companies are doing that very effectively due to a variety of reasons: 42 percent say employees are not being consistently trained across channels, 39 percent say they can’t combine customer interaction data from all channels and 38 percent simply don’t have the budget. To learn more about how you can finally see the full picture of your customer experience, read our complete guide to customer interaction analytics.

In addition, 44 percent say they offer four or more channels to communicate with their brand, but 58 percent admit they think their customers only use two or three. And that’s where the problem lies. Companies don’t know customer preferences, nor do they have the right internal processes to deliver a seamless, consistent experience across all channels.

Omnichannel strategies go far beyond simply adding new self-service options; they require a rewire of quality management, staffing and training, additional customer flexibility and deeper systems and processes integration. At Calabrio, our mission is to empower companies to deliver the omnichannel experiences that customers want. With Calabrio ONE, achieving a seamless customer experience across channels is possible.

To learn more about preparing your organization for omnichannel success, download the full report.

Tom Goodmanson

Tom Goodmanson, President and CEO of Calabrio, has more than 20 years of experience leading fast growing dynamic software and technology companies. Since assuming the CEO position in 2009, Tom is credited with reinventing the company and its culture around a strategy to expand value and reach through new, innovative products, and remarkable customer experiences. Addressing the market need for simpler solutions to complex customer interaction challenges, Tom’s vision to redefine the standard for software ease-of-use has been instrumental in making Calabrio one of the fastest growing companies in the industry.