THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Great customer experiences need great employees
Arjan van den Berg, Senior Partner Director at ContactCenter4ALL discusses the back office technology that is transforming good employees into great front office customer service agents
The customer journey is no longer a simple road to navigate – consumers will not settle for a poor buying or customer service experience, and the pressure is on businesses to keep pace with a demanding consumer base. These pressures extend to the contact centre, where reaching service levels is paramount, but not as simple as what is seen on the surface. Great customer experiences begin with great employees – and contact centres must ensure their back-end operations are powered with the correct technology, to empower front-end operators with the tools they need to deliver the connected contact center of the future. Gone are the days when customers will put up with average interactions with a business – now, 68% of consumers state that they have lost trust in a company after a poor buying experience or communication. Contact centres need to dig deeper than what is ground level. Even the most straightforward tasks may require further thoughts or actions to ensure the customer journey remains first-class. Businesses really can’t afford to slack on offering great customer contact enablement – and it’s where the right contact centre software, ensures that they don’t have to. Integrated software provides businesses with the technology foundation to solve customer issues the first time, and improve their customer relationship management, while simultaneously empowering employees behind the scenes. Friction at a minimum – technology to the maximum When it comes to great customer delight, friction must be kept to a minimum. Customers want choices, whether it’s to contact via live chat, research the website Q&A, or pick up the phone and speak to an agent, today’s consumers expect to be able to use every channel possible with the confidence their
issue is being dealt with. Research has found that over 82% of customers will likely trust a brand and remain loyal to a business that offers first-rate customer service. But remember, the customer journey begins way before the first point of physical contact – for most consumers, it starts at the website. A great customer journey is a short customer journey, not rushed but efficient – and it’s why a quick answer or first-time fix is so crucial when it comes to resolving customer issues. Time to resolution matters, and it matters both ways – the quicker the resolution, the happier the customer and the quicker agents can turn to other consumers and help resolve their issues. Give employees the best chance to operate in real-time – reporting is the answer Achieving first-rate customer delight is no easy feat, but it’s certainly where technology can play a huge supporting role – and in one area, it can help keep wait times to a minimum. Being left on hold, or transferred to the wrong department is one of the biggest friction areas for consumers within the contact center. The path to fixing this friction begins with intelligent call routing, a workflow management tool linking multiple disparate contact centres and agents together in one unified system to ensure customers are directed to the agent best placed to deal with their issue. Using CC4Teams real-time dashboards for example paired with historical reporting ensures all contact centre activity is readily available. Service level metrics, including average waiting times, number of customers currently in calls, average call durations, and number of agents available, can be accessed in real-time to map employee competencies, find the best available agent and manage call traffic. The benefits are two-fold. Agents are well-positioned with the confidence to help customers in situations that are best suited
Arjan van den Berg Senior Partner Director
contactcenter4all.com
The customer journey begins way before the first point of physical contact – for most consumers, it starts at the website
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