What’s An Online Contact Center?
When speaking with communications and PR professional about Relatrix I am often asked to explain what we mean by ‘online contact center’. Because I work day-t0-day with our customers and software I often forget that the idea of integrating digital communications functionality and making it easily accessible to users isn’t as universally understood as I thought – or hoped.
Here’s a quick primer on the key concepts that make an online contact center different from other approaches to making digital communications more effective in your school, district, organization or city.
1. Users manage their own contact information and preferences
All users have an online contact center account that they can update from your website. When their job or ISP changes and they need to update their email address – they can. If they change cellphone carriers and want to update where they receive text messages – no problem. If they change interests from one school or department to another and want to alter their subscriptions – piece of cake.
2. Users arrive through the front door or the back door
Many digital communications system either allow your users to sign-up through your website (subscriber), or allow you to load them manually, or automatically from a list or database. With our online contact center you can use both methods. This allows your parents, staff, members, citizens, etc. to have an account they can update, but also allow website visitors to sign-up for an account.
3. You combine communication channels and functionality – and save
The way your users want to be communicated with requires you to reach them on more channels than just e-mail. And the manner in which they want to interact with your school, organization or city means you needs multiple tools to go beyond notification and also respond and engage your users. Bringing all the different channels and engagement tools together in one system means you save time and money.
4. You manage multiple relationships with your users
Ever have a parent at your school who is also on staff, or a volunteer who also works at a company that partners with your organization? It is important to identify and manage the multiple relationships each user has so you can get a clear view of how they engage with you. An online contact center helps you define the many relationships that your users can have with your organization and then allows you to communicate with and engage them based on that relationship.
