Consumption patterns, before but also after purchase, have considerably changed these past few years. The multiplication of channels and, specifically, social media channels, has allowed customers to multiply their interactions, to create new journeys, and to therefore change the trend by taking power over brands. This shuffles the cards. Companies must review their manner of contacting customers: intrusive communication is over; it’s time to become proactive, based on customer acceptance. It is a change in perspective that also has an impact on the tools and technologies used by brands.
Interviewed at the Vocalcom stand during the “Stratégie Clients” customer service fair (which takes place in Paris at Porte de Versailles), Eric Dadian, President of the AFRC, Karine Palacios, CPO, and Ombeline Bernard Manusset-Allant, CRO of Vocalcom, shared their views on the future of customer service and the need to evolve the product and business strategy of the company. See their testimony in a series of articles on the changes to customer service, product innovations, and development of Vocalcom.
Vocalcom is mainly known for its extremely efficient dialer that can also be, depending on its usage, intrusive. To deal with these changes to customer behavior when interacting with the company, Karine Palacios, Chief Product Officer at Vocalcom, innovates and evolves its offer toward a multichannel one for a main reason:
Using many channels allows brands to offer their customers the channel they prefer, at the right time, and with the relevant information.
How does this work?
To do this, we analyze customer behavior on the internet, through call analyses, etc., to learn which is the preferred channel. In this manner, we can ask the customer for permission to call him or to begin a conversation. “Thus, we switch from proactive customer service in a ‘blind’ mode to proactive customer service accepted by the user,” states Karine Palacios, CPO of Vocalcom.
This allows a company to give power to the customer and thus adhere to new consumer trends.
Brands make a tremendous investment to understand the most favorable time to engage in a proactive conversation with their customers. They do this because it’s the most efficient way to address their customers. Indeed, since this approach is less intrusive, customer satisfaction will only be greater.
This is why Vocalcom is evolving its offer toward a multichannel one, in order to allow brands to offer their customers the right channel at the right time and with the relevant information. “Up until now, we were offering a predictive, proactive, and preview ‘voice dialer,’” explains Karine Palacios. “We signed a global partnership with the leader of social channels, Infobip.” This partnership allows Vocalcom to build creative omnichannel customer journeys.
In this manner, brands are able to discuss with their customers, at different steps of their journey, to support them in the resolution of their problem, on all channels available: WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, chat, email…The agent will interact with them on the channel chosen by the customer, depending on the objective of the transaction or the conversation. Indeed, customers, depending on their needs, do not look for the same attention or the same support. This has an impact on the choice of conversation channels, as well as the timing.
Voice is still present: “Certainly, when complexity increases, we always offer the opportunity to the customer to speak with an agent over a telephone call,” reassures Karine Palacios. We know that emotions and the human connection are essential to quality customer service.
Combining Infobip, which offers social media channels, virtual self-service, and chatbots; and Vocalcom, which offers its vocal automated dialer and its inbound call manager, email, and chat; allows for the best of two worlds and a perfectly integrated omnichannel solution for both outbound and inbound, thanks to embedded artificial intelligence.
Brands are offering their customers more and more communication channels. This is making the management of the customer journey more complex, from start to finish. To resolve this problem, the adoption of a CRM solution is essential. “More and more companies are realizing that with this multiplication of remote channels, they need a CRM,” explains Karine Palacios.
Fifteen years ago, Vocalcom was the first to integrate Salesforce natively. “Furthermore, I believe that only three companies were using this method of integration,” adds Karine Palacios. We were therefore offering a native solution that was both CRM with Salesforce, and omnichannel with the Vocalcom motor.
Since then, the challenges have evolved, and Vocalcom has as well. This is why we are transforming our offer by becoming a multi CRM solution. “We will be launching shortly a differentiated and extremely rich connector with Microsoft Dynamics,” explains Karine Palacios, and other launches will follow including one with Zendesk.
Brands are concentrating more and more on AI. Vocalcom is also getting into the habit, but under certain conditions: “Artificial intelligence must be implemented from start to finish.”
We base our idea on the 3 As: Analyze, Automate, and Assist.
We analyze the customer’s behavior; we automate the “simple” part of the interactions between the brand and its customers, that we move thereafter at the right moment toward an agent whom we assist thanks to artificial intelligence.
At Vocalcom, we use AI to share data with agents so that they can concentrate on the important elements of the discussion, meaning emotions, the dream, enchantment…”The 3 As allow us to implement and add artificial intelligence to all aspects of the customer journey and the agent experience,” concludes Karine Palacios.
You can also watch the video here.
