and perceptions.
SCS: Another technology, WebRTC, has been talked about concerning omnichannel interactions—what are your thoughts here?
OM: WebRTC is going to have more influence on omnichannel customer interactions in 2015. In essence, WebRTC enables the customer and the company to communicate with one another via a browser while being able to use different modalities, such as voice, video, and chat.
I believe that WebRTC is still in the early adoption stage. Many organizations that currently use it have some of its pieces, but there's room for incorporating additional touch points, and ensuring that customer conversations flow seamlessly through...phone, video, and chat.
I also anticipate [more] focus by WebRTC users to incorporate contact center workforce optimization (WFO) capabilities, such as contextual routing, as part of their WebRTC programs in order to reap maximum rewards from browser-to-browser communications.
SCS: Are there any specific considerations concerning video as part of WebRTC and contact center agents?
OM: Certainly. While incorporating video within the contact center is not a new practice, due to numerous issues, it's still not among the top channels companies use to deliver service. Aside from issues such as the network infrastructure needed to support video-based customer service, companies must also build the foundation to successfully use this channel. This means that the background your customers see when they interact with an agent, the agents' attire, etc., needs to have standards that apply across all interactions. Organizations that are delivering video-based support are therefore focusing not only on simply adding video as another touch point, but also on creating guidelines on how to successfully use it.
SCS: Workforce optimization has been in the market for a while. Do you think it will see even more growth?
OM: The phrase "single view of the customer" has been out there for a long time, but only about 40 percent of contact centers actually have that single view of the customer. That means that 60 percent of contact centers still don't have a unified view of the customer interaction history—the interactions that happen across different touch points. Without getting that piece right, you can't build an omnichannel experience, as your agents need visibility into client needs and activities via previous touch points to maintain the consistency in customer messaging.
A key obstacle preventing companies from building a single view of customer data is inefficiency in customer data flows across different enterprise systems. When interacting with customers across multiple channels, companies capture data across multiple systems.
However, these data points are often not well integrated, which is the reason why companies struggle with a unified view of the customer interactions. We anticipate more organizations [will] look at workflow optimization tools to address this challenge by mapping how the customer data flows across different enterprise systems and addressing any issues to establish better integration.
SCS: How do WFO systems help manage the customer journey?
OM: Customers have different needs across the entire life cycle of interactions they have with a business, from onboarding to engagement and loyalty. Using