WebRTC delivers the next level of customer experience – bringing together the brand intimacy of one-to-one interactions with the efficiency of online services.
Some readers may recall the 1980s Reese's TV commercials where chocolate and peanut butter-loving pedestrians collide with each other on a street corner, creating a delicious mess. After tasting the new mixture, the two walk away more satisfied than before.
WebRTC is like that Reese's peanut butter cup, by bringing together the two dominant channels for contact center interaction – telephony and Web self-service – it creates a very tasty integrated customer experience.
For over a century, consumers used the telephone to communicate with retailers and service providers. It was not very efficient, but it was intimate. Catalog retailers such as Lands' End and L.L. Bean thrived by delivering excellent service via telephone, one customer at a time.
Then, came the Web, which is the opposite – highly efficient, but not very intimate. E-retailers established a new self-service model that consumers happily adopted. It has changed the face of service, while cutting costs for many consumer industries including retail, banking, and travel.
Yet online catalogs, mobile apps, and community bulletin boards can't replace the personal touch delivered by one-to-one customer interactions. Human interactions provide opportunities to upsell and cross-sell products and services. They remain the best way to efficiently handle complex customer service requests and problems, such as financial transactions and insurance claims.
WebRTC gives us the best of both worlds: efficiency and intimacy. WebRTC delivers the next level of customer experience – bringing together the brand intimacy of one-to-one interactions with the efficiency of online services.
Beyond the technology "wow factor," line of business managers want to know the business case for offering WebRTC-enabled personalized services. WebRTC can be used to:
• Decrease hold times and costs by accelerating problem resolution
• Provide new revenue streams by charging for enhanced services
• Differentiate brands, for example, the Amazon Kindle Mayday service
• Deliver concierge-level services to premium customers.
Irwin Lazar's recent post describes how WebRTC live video capabilities can enable agents to solve customer problems more quickly and enhance customer satisfaction. The video capability has the potential to reduce or virtually eliminate costly on-site sales and service visits in a range of industry applications. For example, inspections by insurance adjusters may be handled by mobile WebRTC video.
WebRTC can differentiate contact center services by eliminating the phone numbers customers must dial, and lengthy interactive voice response (IVR) trees to identify the customer and find a qualified agent. With WebRTC, the customer is authenticated using their online login, and their browsing history automatically identifies the right agent and provides the agent with context to help personalize the customer experience.
Alternatively, WebRTC can be used to offer a chargeable contact center service. The technology enables highly skilled agents to deliver valuable services using its screen annotation, co-browsing, voice, and video capabilities. It can be combined with location information provided by most mobile devices to further personalize services. A range of subscription and per-use business models can be created in transportation, healthcare, education, and financial services industries.
Like the enjoyable peanut butter and chocolate combination, WebRTC enables contact centers to deliver a more efficient and intimate customer experience.
Carl Blume is director, enterprise product marketing, Oracle Communications. He is a featured speaker on this week's Enterprise Connect Webinar, "Using WebRTC to Enhance Customer Experiences."
