What is a multichannel contact center?
A multichannel contact center is a communication platform that integrates various digital channels, allowing agents to access customer information and messages in a single place. The purpose of a multi-channel contact center solution is to improve work efficiency and enhance customer experience.
With earlier forms of telecommunication, integration wasn’t possible since each channel functioned through different technology. In the cases of a phone, fax and modem, they needed different devices to receive the data.
Digital transformation
Modern web conferencing requires WebRTC technology. This is an open-source technology that provides real-time communication (RTC) capabilities for web browsers by using simple application programming interfaces (APIs). This technology is supported by all major browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox. Google, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla are among the main contributors to the development of WebRTC.
With WebRTC, users enjoy real-time voice and video communication. The technology maintains high-definition video quality even with a large number of participants.
Omnichannel solution
Eventually, the digital transformation allowed for data to be shared on the server level. With this possibility, contact center agents could see the context from customer interactions on different channels in a single user interface. Some professionals distinguish this development as “omnichannel contact centers,” using multichannel to refer to the platforms that simply allow access to various channels without integration. However, in practice, the two terms are used interchangeably.
In addition to voice, fax, and email, multi-channel contact centers can now integrate customer information and communications from text messages, social media, online contact forms, and live chat. Contact centers can also integrate video communication and dialogs with interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Since integration takes place on the server level, agents can access all channels from a single platform available on a web page.