Multichannel Contact Center
What is Multichannel Contact Center?
Multichannel contact centers provide capabilities for communications on email and chat in addition to traditional voice. A precursor to omnichannel contact centers, Multichannel Contact Centers eliminate channel silos and provide a consistent customer experience for any channel.
A multichannel contact center supports several channels, typically voice plus email and chat, and often SMS or social messaging. Historically, each channel was frequently added as a separate system with its own queue, tools and reporting, so customers who switched channels could have to start over. Bringing channels onto shared tools and routing was the step that reduced those silos.
The distinction from omnichannel is mainly about continuity. Multichannel focuses on offering choice; omnichannel adds a single view of the customer and conversation across channels, so context carries over as customers move between them. When evaluating a setup, buyers look at whether agents use one interface, whether history is shared and whether reporting covers all channels together.
Related: Omnichannel contact center, Channel, Omnichannel customer experience, Totalix.