The future of the Contact Centre, whether you run internal service desks or large inbound contact centres, will involve improving the Customer Experience (CX) to increase both customer loyalty as well support business growth. Contact centres are shifting their strategic focus from customer issue resolution and operational efficiency to providing valuable business insights and opportunities for revenue growth.
Here is a summary of the Top Tips from Contact Center Pipeline on how to do it.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – new cloud-based technologies and AI-powered systems can capture, aggregate, and evaluate large amounts of digital interactions quickly and at scale, often from historically dispersed and siloed systems. The additional datapoints also shed more visibility into the customers’ journeys to that point. Agents can leverage these insights to quickly ramp up on the customers’ histories and jump into issue resolution rather than making the customers repeat the information and context they had already provided. Agents with access to these customer touchpoint insights can create more personalized contact experiences that addresses the customers’ needs quickly and seamlessly. The customers take away positive experiences that will then set the expectation bar higher for future interactions.
- ChatBots – for repeatable tasks or enquiries that might come in outside of standard business hours look to automate responses to common issues or basic enquiries with a chatbot. Contact centre average handle times (AHTs) are on the rise. What used to be three-to-four-minute calls centered mainly around lower-level questions or requests are now clocking up to six to eight minutes on complex and sensitive issues. The combination of super-skilled agents and smart technology support have enabled contact centres to step up and deliver better live experiences over the past year. However, customer expectations are dynamic, and often the last experience is the one they take with them.
- Business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools – drive improvements and operational efficiencies. Quick wins include:
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- Increasing First Contact Resolution (FCR) by analysing performance indicators, eg negative customer sentiment, silence time, high escalations, or long hold times.
- Identifying agent coaching and learning opportunities by tracking silence time and handle time.
- Reducing inbound call volume by identifying recurring questions or requests that could be handled with AI and automation or simply adding information to a website/IVR or chatbot.
- Reducing handle time by evaluating and tweaking agent scripts.
This quick access to reliable customer intelligence will help business leaders to make informed, data-driven decisions for optimal outcomes for your customers and business.
Hastwell works closely with multiple leading vendors of Contact Centre Solutions. Reach out to us today if you are ready to improve your capability and deliver positive outcomes for your business.
