Why Invest in WebRTC When Everyone Goes Self Service?
Why Invest in WebRTC When Everyone Goes Self Service? by Tsahi Levent-Levi
I have heard more than once doubts about the usefulness of WebRTC to the contact center when enterprises are looking to empower their customers through self-service.
Self-service is all about two main benefits:
- Cost reduction, since we don’t need as many support personnel
- Customer satisfaction, since we just empowered them with options besides waiting on our customer support phone line
The obvious thing would be to decide that an investment in WebRTC isn’t necessary anymore, now that our company is all about self-service. I think otherwise.
Let’s take a step back to see how WebRTC can impact the contact center when it comes to cost reduction and customer satisfaction. To do that, we need to understand the three separate touch points of WebRTC to the contact center:
- The end customer
- The support agent
- The mobile app
WebRTC can fit in any of these touch points, providing different benefits.
The end customer
When WebRTC is placed on the website, it offers the ability to contact an agent immediately through the web. No need to pick up the phone or switch to some other medium. This is available only on some of the web browsers out there, and critics have indicated challenges around the user’s peripherals (making sure he has a microphone and speakers, for example).
With all of these challenges, the benefits of using this touch point are considerable:
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Reduction in friction with the end user. With a single click of a button he gains access to an agent
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Using the user’s context (browsing history on the website, identity via login, etc.) to hook them up with the most relevant agent, and providing the context necessary to that agent
This in turn increases the customer’s satisfaction and reduces costs – customers take up less time of an agent since their context has been collected and conveyed to the agent before the call even begins.
The support agent
Another touch point is the support agent. For enterprises where Internet Explorer isn’t forced as the browser of choice for the contact center agents, the use of WebRTC can be a huge boon.
WebRTC allows virtualizing the contact center itself, enabling agents to connect to the system from any machine that uses Chrome or Firefox. The ongoing maintenance costs of a WebRTC system is lower than that of a software-based VoIP client deployed on premise, making this an immediate cost reduction benefit.
The mobile app
The last touch point that is usually overlooked where WebRTC is involved is the mobile application. WebRTC can be embedded within the self-service mobile application of the enterprise. This brings with it two new capabilities:
- Eliminating the need to switch to another application when human assistance is necessary
- Ability to add video support if needed
Inside a mobile application, we are no longer bound to the availability of WebRTC in the browser, as it can be wrapped and packaged as part of the application itself.
Using this option adds the application’s context to play, as in the case of the end customer touch point.
Why is this important?
Human interaction with customers isn’t going away any time soon. It will be needed for years to come. WebRTC brings with it benefits that are aligned with those sought after by self-service.
Two stories resonate here more than any other:
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Amazon Mayday, which started as a high touch customer service offering from a company that did almost everything in self-service. A year after introduction, it beat its own target of 15 seconds wait time
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Intuitive Solutions, which selected a WebRTC vendor to have a single throat to choke in the contact center, and ended up making better decisions due to the data available to them