Good customer experience is key to contact centre success

Understanding trends helps businesses understand what conversations are happening in the industry and likely strategic topics for their competitors.

If everyone else is talking about a new technology and how it affects business operations, why aren’t we? Not all new developments may be relevant, but it helps keep a finger on the pulse of digital transformation. 

It’s no different with contact centres and trends that develop, as work and consumers constantly evolve. Being able to pre-empt trends before they are announced puts a business in a strong tactical position.

Forming valuable customer experience

A useful resource in understanding contact centre trends is the Deloitte Global Contact Center Survey. The latest published report shows that the fifth in top five trends was “focus on value” by way of orchestrating valuable customer experience (CX).

Based on extensive engagement in the industry, and that traditionally we would speak to IT departments which is now shifting rapidly to include CX executives who have decision-making powers, CX could feature more prominently in 2023 or even take the number one spot.

This means that global businesses that use contact centres understand that CX is paramount and that they must start with the customer journey and then build the business process.

The employee experience 

Entrepreneur and business magnate Richard Branson once said: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Enter employee experience (EX). In contact centres, EX and CX work hand in hand because you can't have outstanding CX if employees are not empowered with the right tools and collaborative ability to resolve a client’s query quickly and positively.

Prioritising EX for a contact centre agent will go a long way in converting a contact centre from a cost centre to a value centre. Agents play a crucial role in generating business value by retaining customers and cross selling when the opportunity arises.

Hybrid work environments

The Covid-19 lockdowns may be a distant memory, but it does not mean things are as they were before 2020. Hybrid work environments are becoming increasingly common. These spaces need to be designed properly so the agents' experience of working remotely is secure — giving them full access to required applications, without having to switch between many apps. 

A recent survey from Deloitte and ChromeOS found that 87% of IT decisionmakers foresee a rise in adopting virtual desktop infrastructure in the next three to five years. These services enable fast and easy access to agent applications, regardless of location.

Many of Telviva’s customers are deploying Telviva Omni into Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix environments. Traditional contact centre providers will struggle because omnichannel technology needs to be readily available to run in these new environments.

Context is key

An important cog in EX and CX is giving the agent context on who is calling, emailing or chatting. An agent needs an integrated view of the customer from the same interface. They must be able to see the customer’s journey, previous engagements and outcomes.

This not only makes the employee’s journey better but allows the agent to offer great customer experience. Presenting agents with a view of the customer’s previous engagement with bots and artificial intelligence (AI) — before the customer reaching them — allows agents to pick up where the technology could not resolve the issue and then step in to resolve it. 

Contact centres and their back offices are often separate and use different communication platforms. By giving the agent visibility into the back office, supported by internal text-based messaging between agents, contact centres then break the silos, which benefits customers. Telviva has prioritised leveraging a true Omni experience to consign siloed workplaces to the past. 

A balance between technology and the human touch

Almost nine in 10 customers say their experience is equally important to the product or service they purchase. A recent survey of 6,000 global telco subscribers across 12 countries reported that 80% would abandon a provider after just three negative experiences.

As for making the decision to move to a new internet service provider, poor customer service ranked only a percentage down (12%) than the reliability of the service itself (13%). This is important news when designing a CX strategy.

Key to a good CX is human connection. Technology such as self-service tools and chatbots can be deployed to resolve less complex queries, but it's crucial that customers have the option to seamlessly switch to a person to help them.

Right-channelling refers to meeting customers on their channel of choice, and then switching to the most appropriate channel based on the nature of their query, taking into account security and compliance requirements. 

New channels add to the tapestry, and while voice is still — and will likely remain — vital, video is expected to grow rapidly by upscaling a text-based chat interaction or through intelligent kiosks at physical branches to enable a face-to-face video interaction with contact centre agents. 

Contact resolution is vital and is achieved through easy-to-understand, yet detailed, customer journey mapping. For instance, a customer should not need to repeat themselves on transfer or repeat verification each time they are transferred. 

Using AI and available data, contact centres can pre-empt a customer’s needs and offer personalisation — which is a trend that will continue to grow.

Customer retention is more important than ever in our economic climate, especially with competition being a thumb-swipe away. Beyond this, delivering services from the cloud and prioritising mobile-first tools enable businesses (which maintain continuity), and their customers (who rely on battery-operated devices) to navigate the country’s incessant power cuts.

Expect EX and CX to dominate contact centre discussions and strategy for a long time and leaders to invest in omnichannel solutions that give them a CX and EX edge.

Let the experts help you 

Is your business looking for a synchronised, intelligent, user-friendly contact centre platform that enables agents and customer service personnel to transform customer engagement into a stellar experience? Then contact Telviva today. 

About the author: Kelvin Brown is the regional executive of Telviva in KwaZulu-Natal.

This article was sponsored by Telviva.