Some 70 service managers from Israel’s leading companies gathered to talk and to learn what Omnichannel actually is, where we stand today, and whether a gap has opened up against customer expectations. How it is done, what worked better and what worked less well.
We have put together a review of the main insights:
Demand for interactive service (as distinct from self-service) on digital platforms is now taken for granted. Start with the customer’s point of view. Demand for service over messaging is growing exponentially.
In a survey of the companies attending the conference, those already running service over written communication reported that 20-40% of interactive service is now handled on these platforms: 20% on synchronous communication such as chat, and 20% on asynchronous communication – WhatsApp, email and above all the company’s own app.
On the consumer side, we find very high openness to receiving service through written and digital channels, either as a substitute for the phone and the traditional channels or integrated with them. Demand is mainly for post-purchase service and information, returns and exchanges. In healthcare and in banking there is also openness to services carrying a personal, advisory element, such as a medical assessment or a loan application.
Tal Geva, VP Service at Migdal (a leading Israeli insurer), shared that WhatsApp service is Migdal’s flagship service. “We started small, with a human agent on a specific process: withdrawing funds, taking a loan. A few days later the customer wants to know what is happening, whether all the documents came through, and when the money will arrive: process status and document validity,” Tal recounts. “Then COVID arrived and turned the channel into a central one.
We opened the service to all customers and all topics, it worked well, we ran it that way for two years. In time we understood that exchanges calling for a softer, more substantive dialogue – what about my funds? what am I entitled to? should I open one? – were turning into long conversations, and we decided to concentrate the WhatsApp effort on a bot alone, which answers roughly 70% of inquiries.
For the remaining inquiries the bot lets the customer choose a slot for a phone conversation with a human agent and schedules the call.”
Where do we stand in the move from multichannel service (Multi Channel) to omnichannel service (Omnichannel)
An omnichannel maturity analysis we ran on the survey of conference participants shows that most companies are at the cross- channel stage. They offer the customer a range of channels to approach them through, each channel carries a different mix of services, and in many cases the customer is moved from one channel to another without real continuity.
Liat Menashe, head of the service operation at Strauss Water, recounts: “We were spread across every channel – chat, email, social networks, telephone. In 2022 we built a customer experience strategy, and one of its pillars was written communication and communication with customers in general.
We thought about the customer experience as a whole, and decided to focus the channels: WhatsApp was chosen as the central channel, we closed chat, we allow email outside business hours, and on social networks we accelerated the response. Broadly, we sharpened the operating concept.” Liat also notes that WhatsApp is a very sensitive channel, and recommends managing time-to-response: “If you don’t answer quickly, gaps open up. It needs watching.”
On customer experience we learn that four central principles deserve attention: trust, status feedback, information security, and the customer’s sense of control, so that they can move between channels at any stage of the service.
Amos Podim, head of the direct channels division at Discount Bank, said: “Over the past year we focused our efforts on the written channel, and took on the challenge – how do you enable a complete experience, starting and finishing in written communication… Banking is a complicated world.
We mapped what can be handled at tier 1, opened up permissions and authority to maximize resolution, and topics that cannot be closed at tier 1 move to tier 2 – the handling of complex inquiries. Where we identified that an exchange could not be completed in writing, we instructed a move to the phone channel.”
Asked whether the customer feels the move to tier 2, Amos answered that they are careful to work transparently with customers and to set expectations along the way. If the customer stays in control and informed, Amos notes, they will not go looking in other channels. “When we didn’t set expectations, we saw repeat calls and parallel inquiries across channels.”
Hila Friedman, head of the support system at Wolt, noted that all of their service is delivered in written communication only. They adapted the language and let agents chat with customers in natural language, mixing in emojis and humor. Hila notes that this significantly improves satisfaction with the service.
Does opening additional channels grow demand, or shift it between channels?
Conference participants shared both an impression and hard data that opening a new channel produces a rise in demand at first, but that over time volume shifts between the channels – provided the messaging channels deliver good, sufficient service. Companies reported a shift of roughly 30% of phone inquiries to the written channels, combining bots and parallel handling; over time this also produced efficiency improvement in response resources.
To Bot or Not to Bot
Elad Mizrahi, CEO of TIFF, presented the success story of rolling out the bot and artificial intelligence in Liveperson‘s Omnichannel system at McDonald’s, during preparations for a significant ramp up in the nationwide deployment of delivery service under COVID.
The use of the bot and of artificial intelligence made it possible, in a short space of time, to multiply response capacity by several hundred percent and to deliver efficient, self-learning handling – customer compensation, for example – and to manage the customer journey through an order with no agent involvement.
The question came up of whether to signal to the customer when they are talking to a bot and when to an agent.
Opinions went both ways. Uri Yonisi, of Bank Leumi, noted that when the service is delivered successfully it makes no difference to the customer who they are talking to. Nili Samberg of Clalit (Israel’s largest HMO) noted that in healthcare a human response is critical to the customer, people want to talk to someone.
That speaks to the principle of control, or choice, which has to be maintained throughout the process: let the customer ask to move to a human agent.
Omnichannel operations have their own challenges too. Management methods, measurement and “real-time management” all have to be adapted to the nature of the activity. And the bots can be enlisted for that as well..
The managers noted that it is worth having versatile agents for backup, but that there is no need for every agent to be versatile across channels. Lior Farkash of Pelephone noted that they designated agents who can deliver service across combined channels and move the customer to a written channel in the course of an ongoing case. From that moment the inquiry is managed by that specific agent until it is closed.
Most of the managers shared that under load they rebalance agents across the channels in real time. Hila Friedman, head of the support system at Wolt, described how they enlisted the bots in shift management.
At peak hours or under load they defined the ability to widen the range of topics the bot answers, which routes fewer conversations to agents. The bot identifies the topic of the conversation, and against a clearly defined “traffic light” of urgency and load, the shift supervisors decide which conversations a bot answers and which an agent does.
Conference participants noted that they adapted the metrics and the management methods to the new world. They recommend tracking the number of interactions per inquiry, and managing several inquiries in parallel. Orit Dolgin, a digital service specialist, noted that these are different skills: the way agents are taught, managed and coached for written communication is different.
Orit also reminded us that the customer is not measured on SLA the way we are, so we need to find a way to let them continue the conversation without going through identification again or restarting through the bot.
To sum up, every panel participant noted that the move to Omnichannel sits at the heart of service work, and has to be built into the organizational strategy. It needs management attention and budget.. It is necessary, because it is what customers want, and it is well worth it, because in the end you really can drive efficiency, work off more accurate and better-targeted information, and deliver better service.
