Achieving great customer experiences is harder than ever – consumers have become not just more demanding, but more unwilling to suffer a poor buying or customer service experience.

These expectations must carry through into contact centre operations – but reaching these levels is not as simple as it may seem. With this article, we’ll dig deeper and analyse just what needs to power back-end operations to drive the connected contact centre of the future. From exploiting AI to going omnichannel to reduce customer call times, the end goal is clear: achieving and exceeding all-important customer expectations on the path to customer delight.

One thing made clear by today’s consumers is that mediocre experiences and interactions won’t make the cut when it comes to satisfying demands. Recent research by Broadridge found that over two in three consumers (68%) have lost trust in a company after a poor experience or communication. The reality of achieving great customer delight and customer contact enablement is that there is much more than what is seen above ground – even the most basic of principles require additional thought and actions that sit below the surface of what today’s customers see.

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 an provides businesses with the technology foundation to solve customer issues first time, improve their customer relationship management, while simultaneously empowering employees behind the scenes.

1. It’s more than just omnichannel – the technology powering the back end

When it comes to great customer delight, friction must be kept to a minimum. Customers want choices, whether its 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 are 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.

Real-time insights and historical reporting give agents the ability to act fast and correctly!

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 centre. 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 to their expertise and skill sets, subsequently boosting morale and motivation. On the customer side, it’s all about reducing customer wait times, while improving first-rate fixes – it might sound like the basic principles of achieving customer delight, but many contact centres are failing to efficiently route their customers to the right agent, at the right time.

2. The power of data to ensure sure the customer is seen, and heard – at all times

Of course, first-time fixes in customer experience are not always possible – perhaps an issue needs further investigation, or the correct agent to deal with the query is unavailable. No matter what, this should not detract from a positive customer journey. Customers still want to be heard, and they expect a response that understands their needs.

The more you know, the better the service – its time to get personal

Perhaps most importantly, customers want a personalised experience, tailored to previous service or buyer history. Gone are the days of driving blind into customer service and hoping for the best. They want call and contact centres to know their names, information about their recent interactions with the company, and they don’t want to repeat information they have already provided. This is where contact enter software integration into Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, provide the benefit from full visibility into logged calls and customer data/history – from the last question asked by that customer, the last time they called in, and their personal information. The more data that the contact centre agent has access to, the better the experience – and increased chance of achieving a timely fix.

CC4Teams powers contact centres to have all the intel needed from supporting business solutions in one place. It enables supervisors and agents to see precisely what has happened without having to manually investigate or ask other agents – serving up the required data right in front of them.

3. CX and EX on steroids – artificial intelligence means agents can react in real-time

To create the ideal customer journey, customer experiences (CX) and employee experiences (EX) must work in tandem with one another. Agents need the correct tools, technology, and guidance to act in real-time, respond to customer questions and queries, all in a timely and well-informed manner. It’s where artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms within the supporting contact centre software, such as CC4Teams can assist. Powered by Copilot, conversations and suggested responses are automated to provide agents with real-time support.

CC4Teams harnesses the advanced data analytics and visualisation capabilities of Power BI to help provide real-time analysis of the conversation to offer dialogue suggestion, while analysing all interactions to improve performance in the future. Unambiguous data models within the solution help contact centres to predict future customer behaviour to offer targeted interactions, and continuously improve on higher levels of customer experience.

Security included! Ensuring customer data is stored correctly and safely

Whenever customer data and new technologies are around, security is paramount. But for contact centres, particularly for those dealing with sensitive customer information, putting all information, call recordings and personal data in a safe and secure environment, provides the ultimate peace of mind that all correct guidelines and regulations are adhered to.

Research found that over 42% of customers have stopped doing business with a company because of a hack that exposed customer data. At CC4ALL, putting security at the top of the priority list has been an ongoing priority. And it’s why all recordings are managed by CallCabinet and stored safely in Azure Communications.

End-to-end customer delight must be a two-way process

It’s easy for companies to focus solely on powering the great customer experiences that only consumers will see – forgetting to drive the back-end operations that make great customer contact enablement possible.

Using an advanced contact centre solution, businesses are equipped with the tools and technology to ensure employees are given the correct means to handle customer calls with confidence, and with the knowledge that they can take care of the entire customer journey.

 

• Arjan van den Berg, is the senior partner director at ContactCenter4ALL, an omni-channel solution for customer contact, covering voice, e-mail, web chat and social media.