Organizations had to move quickly to cope with the shock caused by the pandemic in 2020. They had to recreate their operations in remote form, using technology to extend into workers’ homes to stay open. In the process, this revealed that the tools and business practices traditionally used to run contact centers were out of date.
Sometimes a way of operating is successful enough that it persists via inertia even after it’s been superseded by what’s new. It can take a sudden black swan event like the pandemic to alert people to the gaps. For example, contact center infrastructure had been moving to the cloud for more than a decade, but slowly. Now in a flash, the cloud was the best (and sometimes only) way to support agents working remotely. This near-instant change in circumstances accelerated digital transformation projects and opened the door to making other fundamental changes.
Three core elements of service operations have shifted in basic ways, creating the need for different technology platforms and new ways of engagement with employees and customers. First, customers are behaving differently. Since the advent of mobile devices, they have shown a preference for multichannel interactions that usually have a digital component, instead of going straight to a voice call when they want to engage. They are also much more likely to use self-service and to expect speedy, frictionless interactions.
Second, this consumer shift affects how agents do their jobs. Instead of being passive players, today’s agents are being asked to solve more complicated problems stemming from those more engaged customers’ heightened expectations. They are also increasingly empowered to make proactive decisions to help customers. Agents must synthesize more types of information coming from multiple sources, and they have to do it in real time, often from home without peers or supervisors around to give them guidance and support.
The third change is in the amount and types of data that flow between and around agents and customers. More software systems collect and analyze customer and transaction data, and this data gets used in more contexts throughout a business. Marketers, for example, examine customer sentiment and intent based on recorded interactions and customer feedback. This is a long way from the original use case for that data, which was to evaluate agent performance.
The transition to digital communications is at the heart of all these shifts. The pandemic encouraged a shift from in-store retailing to online commerce, which led to an increase in the volume of interactions and data organizations must handle. We believe that by 2024, 7 in ten customer interactions will combine automated conversational self-service and live agents, reducing costs, time spent and enabling agents to focus on high-value interactions. When a customer uses a mobile app, starts an automated chat session, or sends an SMS to a contact center, they are starting on a journey that may have multiple connection points, including voice and digital, that can ultimately last longer than a voice call, Digital interactions generate a trail of data breadcrumbs that tell a vastly more complicated story about the relationship and its future. It is now essential to have a strategy for capturing and analyzing this data. Digital channels are more than simply an alternative to voice. From here on out, any engagement with a customer has to come equipped with awareness of the context. Without an upgrade, that context is impossible to find when hidden in multiple data sources, applications, and siloed processes throughout the organization.
The future of customer engagement requires an updated platform that accommodates these changes and adds new ways for agents to provide value to customers and to their organizations. The new basics for contact centers start in the cloud, with a modern CCaaS platform that connects the center’s communications with the systems used by the rest of the organization. Contact centers can no longer afford to be separate and siloed operations.
Updating the center’s interaction handling capabilities goes hand in hand with providing tools that enhance the agent’s experience. Agents need access to streamlined information resources that surface what’s important based on a real-time assessment of the needs of the customer and situation. A modern CCaaS platform should also act as the gateway for back-office applications to provide needed data and streamline complex processes. The agent sits at the center of the interaction, acting as a traffic cop for the stakeholders on the business side and as a problem solver for the customer.
A digital posture allows a business to be more proactive—notifying customers automatically in case of a problem, for example. It also provides the digital fuel needed to measure and analyze customer behavior from multiple perspectives, depending on the needs of different parts of the organization. Contact center practitioners often don’t realize the value that can be derived from the insights they generate when used by sales teams, product designers, marketers and even financial teams.
This moment of broad transition should be seen as filled with multiple opportunities. Now organizations can meet their more deeply engaged customers in digital channels of their choice. Agents can be refocused on problem solving through tools and training designed for a faster, more conversational era. And organizations can use the contact center as a proactive tool for measuring customer value, loyalty, longevity and advocacy. The digital future crept up on the industry while it was dealing with a crisis. Now is the moment to examine core operating principles and seek out a modern CCaaS platform equipped with the digital diversity that modern customer experience requires.