There are now so many different communication channels, consumers might be said to be spoilt for choice. And contact centres which deal with all those choices are under pressure to cope.

A survey of both consumers and contact centre managers by Corizon – which supplies an Enterprise Mashup Platform to businesses and contact centres across England, Wales and Scotland – aimed to find out which channels were most popular with consumers and how they were handled at the contact centre.

When asked how they would contact a company for customer, billing or
support enquiries, consumers chose across a range of eight contact
channels. The telephone was the most popular channel, selected by 75 per cent of
respondents, followed by email (70%), web self-service (43%), letter (31%),
social media such as Twitter or Facebook (4%), fax (3%) and SMS (3%).

When asked which contact channels they supported, the responses from
contact centre managers showed that the phone was clearly the most popular medium, with 100 per cent support for phone queries. Ninety-six per cent had email support, 90 per cent handled customer requests by letter, 65 per cent offered web self-service, 27 per cent supported SMS requests, 20 per cent handled social media such as Twitter, online forums or Facebook, and 11 per cent offered IM and online chat support.

More than half (59%) of contact centre managers interviewed said their
agents were expected to handle different contact channels simultaneously
and 22 per cent said agents were expected to handle different channels,
but on separate shifts. The majority of managers (75%) said contact centre
staff used three to five different software applications to handle customer
service enquiries, a number which typically increases as new channels and
related applications are introduced.

Emma Chablo, marketing director of Corizon, said: “Each channel increases the complexity of an agent’s desktop exponentially. As a result of the demand for new contact channels, desktop environments are littered with dozens of different screens with agents scrambling between them to find the right answer. This is hampering customer service operations, making it difficult for many contact centres to achieve the quality of service customers want.”

When investigating different contact channels, Corizon found differences in
consumer demographics. Of the 2,127 British consumers surveyed, 18-24
year-olds were the most likely to use social media such as Twitter or
Facebook, over 65-year-olds were most likely to write letters, while IM was
most prevalent amongst 25-34-year-olds.

Geographical differences were also evident. The Welsh were the most likely to use chat and social media for customer service technology, with 20 per cent using either online chat or social media such as Facebook, Twitter and online forums, whilst Northern Englanders prefer to write, with 74 per cent choosing email and 36 per cent letters – the highest percentages in both categories. Londoners are slightly more likely to text (5%) compared to the rest of the population (3% average).

London-based Corizon has found that 60 per cent of contact centre agents feel technology is failing to provide adequate and timely information in customer service situations – and 83 per cent of consumers surveyed agree. The number of applications necessary to resolve queries was cited as key cause, with a third of contact centre managers stating the increase in applications and complexity was a significant problem.

Chablo concluded: “We hear time and time again that contact centres desperately need to lessen the number of applications within customer service environments. It’s unfeasible for agents to switch between so many applications and channels. Contact centre and business managers need to reduce complexity, yet increase access to valuable customer information.”