Glossary · O

Omnichannel

A man looking at his smartphone in the street in the evening

Definition

Omnichannel means that every contact channel shares one queue, one contact history and one desktop, so a request survives a change of channel.

Most organisations have offered voice, email, chat and messaging for years. That alone is not omnichannel. The term does not describe how many channels you run, but how they work together.

#Multichannel and omnichannel

	Multichannel	Omnichannel
Routing	separate queues per channel	one queue for every channel
History	split by system	one timeline per customer
Desktop	several applications	one desktop
Channel switch	the request starts over	the request carries on

In multichannel, channels sit side by side. In omnichannel, they share rules, data and interface. The difference only shows when a customer switches: from chat to phone, from email to a messaging app.

#The three building blocks

The first requirement is shared routing. A chat and a call compete for the same people, so they must be prioritised by the same rules.

The second is a shared history. Whoever takes the contact sees what has already happened in every channel. That requires knowing it is the same person; see identity resolution.

The third is one desktop for every channel. Agents switch between conversations, not between applications. Templates, knowledge and scripts are the same in every channel, so the answer in chat matches the answer on the phone.

One desktop for voice, chat, email and messaging, with timeline and case in the same view. Sample.

#What changes day to day

Customers do not have to explain their request again after switching channels.
Team leads see one situation instead of many partial pictures.
Planning and service level cover every channel together.
Reporting shows which requests start in which channel and where they end.

#Omnichannel in Univerx

Omnichannel is not an end in itself. What counts is that a request is resolved in as few contacts as possible, whichever channel it arrives through.

The Univerx Contact Center brings every channel into one queue and one agent desktop. How to plan service from the customer's path rather than the channel is the topic of Journey first, not channel first.

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