In the age of hyper-connectivity, customers expect to be able to contact the businesses with which they interact through numerous channels. They also want more reactive, mobile and seamless experiences across these touch points.

For the enterprise, this means the use of an average of nine different tools to manage customer interactions. These might include CRM, a Digital Customer Interactions Platform, reporting tools, voice call solutions, and so forth. All these tools generate large amounts of data, often in proprietary formats.

The modern organization’s challenge is, therefore, to find a way to connect different tools together to optimize the processes of customer interactions, to create better brand loyalty and a more meaningful business-customer relationship.

The concept of open platforms makes it easier to respond to the challenges of data management and enables the full connectivity of the different customer service tools across the entire customer care ecosystem.

Via APIs, any tool can be connected into an open platform, meaning data circulates freely, helping to process interactions more efficiently. Among its benefits, this approach allows the 360-degree view of customer, which is essential to today’s enterprise.

The Dimelo Digital platform is open, meaning that organizations can connect their own back-end business management systems with Dimelo’s customer interactions solution. Existing or future systems which can be conjoined may include, for example, in-house, third-party or cloud-hosted software, VOIP systems, call management solutions, social media, messaging platforms, SMS and so on.

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A significant advantage of open systems is their future-proof nature. As new messaging apps gain favor among customers, or in-house systems are developed within the company, they can take their place among the tools that the enterprise can use to increase customer interaction value.

Let’s review how an open platform enhances customer care by comparing different situations:

The Customer Experience — disconnected systems

• A customer contacts his telecoms operator by email. Agents interacting with the message may not be able to access information stored in the CRM. To identify the client, the agent needs to ask for further information – which the business already possesses. The agent then uses a different interface from the email management system to access the client’s file.

The whole experience means the customer has an onerous interaction with the company. Additionally, the company bears greater costs due to the increased processing time.

• A customer contacts their telecoms provider via WeChat with a problem such as a blocked SIM card. Amongst the options offered by the chatbot is the option “I have another question, I want to speak with an agent.” The chatbot transfers the enquiry so that the customer is contacted by a human operator in another channel – by phone, for example. The customer needs to repeat his or her problem, and re-supply personal details, including security checks.

The Customer Experience — connected systems

• A customer contacts his telecoms operator by email. Agents interacting with the message have the customer’s details recognized by the CRM, and the whole customer record is automatically displayed.

The CRM and the company’s interaction management system communicate via an open platform that’s addressed by APIs. There is full synchronization between conversational data in real-time, and backend, transactional data.

DCIP= Digital Customer Interactions Platform

Necessary information is passed to the right agent at the right time, resulting in a quicker turnaround of the customer’s problem, and less time spent by the customer resolving a simple issue.

• A customer contacts their telecoms provider via WeChat with a problem such as a blocked SIM card. If the customer selects “I have a different question, I need to speak with an agent,” when interacting with the chatbot, an agent using WeChat can be connected immediately thanks to an automated handover by the open platform. The entire interaction takes place on the customer’s choice of messaging platform, and there’s no need for repeated security checks, description of the problem, and so on.

The Enterprise Gains

In addition to the increased level of customer satisfaction derived from the free interchange of data across different software solutions and comms channels, businesses can also gain from an open communication management in some of the following:

• Multichannel chatbots. Instead of developing and maintaining chatbots for each communication channel, why not develop once, and deploy many times down the API interfaces to all your channels?
• Better user agent use. Particular skill sets, and abilities (as determined by levels attained by training or experience) can be best deployed by intelligent routing systems, according to need.

For example, an agent who speaks Thai fluently as a second language can be automatically assigned to particular customer conversation seamlessly, without the customer having to switch to a different channel, translate their email to the business, or start a new conversation thread.

• Agent identity management

SSO (single sign-on) is an authentication system which grants agents and staff access to different applications, without having to create multiple IDs and passwords.

By using SSO and SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), the work of agents can be facilitated across different tools with one sign-in: Digital Customer Interactions Platform, CRM, and so forth. Agents can transition between the different tools seamlessly to provide faster and more insightful answers, as customers have come to expect. Additionally, new agents’ identities can be managed in a single place by the IT department.

• Text mining. The amounts of data collated by today’s enterprises are growing, and the costs of processing all data to produce a 360-degree customer view are increasing as a result.

Text mining tools – often deploying AI technologies – can be very useful in drawing out key business intelligence from among the gigabytes of data collected every day.

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By deploying an open platform like the Dimelo Digital platform, organizations can leverage the very latest in machine learning-powered text processing technologies – lowering costs and improving efficiencies in the customer service department.

Click here to learn more about open communication management platforms, and Dimelo’s powerful digital customer care interactions platform.