By: Neil Titcomb, MD UKI at Odigo.
As the UK emerges from COVID-19 and moves towards more flexible, hybrid working models, it is important for businesses to ensure they have the technology and strategy in place to provide rewarding, personalised customer experience (CX).
After a lengthy and stressful lockdown, employee wellbeing must be front of mind for employers asstaff are likely to be anxious about returning to work. Furthermore, with contact centres employing around 1.3 million people in the UK and playing such an important role for businesses, it’s crucial that agents remain motivated and productive.
So how can this be achieved? Neil Titcomb from Odigo, a leading provider of contact centre technology, delivers four contact centre tips for maximising contact centre success post lock-down.
- Create a positive work environment
Flexible working models existed before lockdown, howeveremployee wellbeing initiatives will continue to increase and become a key factor in retaining an effective, efficient workforce moving towards contact centre success. According to flexible workspace operator IWG,“46%of workers would now quit a job if they were asked to return to the office fivedays a week following the pandemic.”Therefore, failing to support employees or understanding their preferred ways of working, could lead to poor agent morale and low productivity or poor customer service.
Adapting the right technology and workforce management systemswillmake the transition to any new work models easier for contact centres with remote workforces. It is important to remember this as keeping staff motivated from a distance is often challenging for employers.However,leveraging gamification effectively –for example, offering badges or points to those who have been able to successfully resolve the most customer queries during the month – is a great way to drive productivity and drive contact centre success.
In addition, efficient workforce management systemsreduce stress by allowing contact centres to take a data-driven approach to customer query handling.These systemsensure agents have the information they need to deal with any query effectively and smoothly. They also make sure any guidance provided by agents is aligned with the business’ overallCX strategy and branding. Want more contact centre tips? Then keep reading…
- Connect clients to the right contact centre agents for valuable tips
Skill-Based Routing (SBR) via artificial intelligence (AI)technology offers an effective way of personalising CX in contact centres and provides a more efficient way of handling customer queries overall. Using data to categorise incoming calls, SBR connects customers to the agent with the right knowledge and skillset to resolve their issue.This removes much of the frustration of speaking to agents that don’t have the information people are looking for – leading to more contact centre success all-round.
Using SBR can also increase job satisfaction among contact centre workers – allowing them an opportunity to showcase their knowledge or expertise in a certain area. This, in turn, can drive productivity and overall happiness among staff. Two contact centre tips down, two to go…
- Be channel-less
Clients today use many communications channels and theyexpect brands to do the same. Recent research from Odigo and the Call Centre Management Association (CCMA) showed significant differences between which channels were preferred by different customer age groups. It showed that thoseaged 55+ are 15% more likely than those aged 18-34 to access customer service over the phone, with those aged 18-34 much more likely to use chatbots. As a result, omnichannel capabilities are now vital for contact centres to build and maintain client relationships. However, being channel-lesshas now becomeeven more important on this front.
Compared to being multi or ‘omni’ channel, being channel-less means that the channel we use to communicate with customers is not what’s important – the most important thing is the conversation itself, regardless of which platform it takes place on.
For example, this is often seen when customers effectively move from making queries in a brick-and-mortar setting, to another channel. Through their console, agents are able to see the nature of the call and pick-up where the customer left off before, allowing the conversation to resume seamlessly. This effectively aims to take the frustration away from customers of having to re-explain their query every time they connect to the contact centre and can provide an all-round more positive CX. There’s one more contact centre tip you need to know…
- Commit to open technology for contact centre success
Creating excellent CX requiresalignment across almost every business area, which can be difficult without the right tools and/or when dealing with a remote workforce.
Disruptive technology such as cloud services offer a simple, yet powerful and effective means of streamlining the different parts of businesses to make sure you’re providing the best CX possible. By seeking out open technologies that act as complimentary building blocks to existing ecosystems businesses will save themselves time and money, but also allow them to invest in specialist technology providers that better suit their needs.
These technologies also accelerate digital strategies and transformations, in addition to enabling seamless integration and excellent, reliable data security.Ensuring the cloud is as secure as on-premise solutionsshould be a priority for businesses. Personal data is valuable and nefarious actors will exploit weaknesses in a business’s infrastructure to access this for their own gain. Cloud breaches can not only lead to fines and negative publicity, but in some cases, irreversible reputational damage. By investing in good cloud security, and ensuring employee’s practice good cyber hygiene, businesses can protect their customers and themselves, while enhancing the flexibility of their organisation and improving their disaster recovery process. That’s it! Those are the four contact centre tips you know to ensure contact centre success – post-COVID. But what does this mean?
Contact centre tips that generate success
Following the pandemic, there will be an even greater focus on providing quality CX. For this reason, it’s more important than ever for businesses using contact centres to review their strategy to ensure they are operating in the most efficient and effective way possible.
Furthermore, adopting the right technology and practiceswill enable businesses to streamline their contact centre operations and future-proof their customer service strategy, allowing them to adapt to the new normal going forward.
