Call centers offer all types of services: Tech support, chat, inbound, outbound, sales, marketing, customer services, etc. There are different mediums of communication being used: email, chat, forums, phone, and perhaps even text could be used. How are mediums integrated and how much does it matter? Different mediums of interaction have different characteristics and those characteristics can be optimized too. Email is wonderful for issues that involve quick questions and answers, but that are not time sensitive enough to require an immediate answer. The phone is a wonderful tool where you can engage in a back and forth dialogue, or even confrence call. But, the drawbacks of the phone, is that the person answering the phone needs to be available when you call. Being put on hold for thirty minutes is a huge waste of labor.

Companies these days want to reduce their labor expenses, so they make it unpleasant to call them. I'm not sure what the logic here is in terms of providing good customer service. Perhaps the goal is to provide bad customer service so that your customers stop bothering you. Many companies have you talk to a robotic voice that doesn't understand half of your answers, makes you repeat yourself five times -- "I'm sorry.......... did you say, 'YES', I couldn't make your answer out clearly". Then you scream, "YES... damn it.... YES, can't you understand English, give me a HUMAN please!!!". To get away from the robot and get a human is an ordeal these days. Since we are so short of labor, I think we should outsource call center service more. Customer service via phone should involve humans who are receptive. Otherwise, we should refine our robotics to the point that robots actually understand what you are saying and can quickly ease you through the various menus and procedures, and maybe even crack a few jokes.

Robot jokes. Ya'know, a funny thing happened to me on the way to work today. All the other robots were having their oil break, but my CPU chip was running a bit slow. So, I had to see Harry to get it fixed. He said, "What does this piece of junk know, he's just a robot". So, I gave him a piece of my mind and said, "I resent that remark". Its not easy being a robot you know. Nobody likes us either. Whenever I graciously answer the phone, people always ask to speak to a human. I say, how would you like it if you were a robot and nobody wanted to talk to you, right?

The trick seems to be to have fast and capable phone answering service, wherever it is. Even if this costs a bit more, it improves your customer relations and market share overall. If this is expensvie, you can offer clients a slightly cheaper service plan if they agree to use online help only. It makes sense to pay for what you get, and to get quality regardless of what medium you are using.

Email or online customer service as a primary method makes sense. Its fast and inexpensive. Once you can identify which customer really has a difficult problem that can only be well handled by phone, then you call them. This is a great way to integrate online and offline technologies.

Chat seems like a perfect way to initiate a conversation. Response is immediate and there are no robots. The BPO call center employee can switch mediums later on if there is a problem.

The bigger challenge is not deciding what mediums to use, and not even how to train your staff. Training your customers how to use new communication systems effectively is time consuming and its difficult to get them to adjust to new habits. Your investment of time will pay off. If you can convert half of your customers to online communication, your company will save millions. That is definately worth whatever hand holding was necessary to train those customers what to do and how to do it!