THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Michelle Kelly, Product Marketing Manager at 8x8, details how sitting on your hands may be too much for some companies to afford.
Times are tough at multiple levels – at home and at business – and for many, there’s a temptation to just keep trying to get through with what people or companies have – the ‘don’t change if it isn’t broken’ mentality, but does there come a point when doing nothing actually starts to cost you money instead of saving it, especially in the field of customer experience? Studies from research companies like Metrigy are showing that customer satisfaction has been ranked as the top business priority – more important than product/service quality, revenue generation, information security, employee retention, and investor satisfaction. The challenge here is that customer demands are now very rarely across one singular channel of engagement and solving a problem for them may not be easily achieved through just one aspect of a contact centre. If there is just a singular channel – or non- joined up channels – then the potential for disgruntled customers is considerable. It may well be that with only a phone call system, separate or unconnected emails from a customer may be missed or a customer is unable to get fast real-time solutions to a
problem. It may be even more basic than that – customers would prefer to contact in other ways, either over social media, webchat or email and simply do not want to call in and speak to an agent. Only offering them one method of communication can lead to loss of contact and potential sales or problem resolving. Dealing with customers in the modern era requires an intelligent backend system and insight from different areas of the company, and nothing is more frustrating to customers than being bounced around and having to repeat information. Contact centre agents can no longer be on an island – they need to be integrated with the rest of the company. Over the years some organisations have tried to eke out every last piece of performance by going for a patchwork approach, adding bolt-on services to keep technology running along but this adds strains to not only the systems but also to IT staff who have to juggle more and more to keep everything working well. It also puts pressure on customer service and sales agents having to toggle between systems and platforms to operate effectively.
Michelle Kelly Product Marketing Manager
8x8.com
It may well be that with only a phone call system, separate or unconnected emails from a customer may be missed or a customer is unable to get fast real-time solutions to a problem.
CONTINUED
ucadvanced.com
49
Powered by FlippingBook