The old is gone, and the new has here. Contact centres are evolving, and so should your technology. Customer journeys used to be very easy and linear in traditional contact centres: call in, chat to an agent, and address the problem. Such days, however, are long gone. With the growth of multichannel communication, the customer journey has become more complicated, and the path to a good customer experience (CX) may straddle numerous distinct channels, including not just human agents but also bots.
CIOs and CX executives face a critical but difficult role in today’s tight economic climate: maintaining growth while simultaneously lowering spending and enhancing efficiency. Most IT leaders think that investing in new technology will assist expedite growth and assure long-term success. Yet, one critical issue remains: What technologies should you invest in to improve customer experience? With so many alternatives available, it may be difficult to determine which ones will provide the greatest value and the best return.
The Cloud
Traditional on-premise contact centres are soon becoming obsolete, with over 75% of contact centres aiming to migrate to the cloud by mid-2023 if they haven’t already done so. The global market for cloud contact centre technology will reach $45.5 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 24.8%.
So, what is causing this trend away from traditional contact centres? There are a number of considerations, many of which revolve around the cloud’s capacity to provide more flexible, multichannel service delivery and allow contact centres to function across a globally distributed workforce. These elements are crucial for contact centres to meet changing staff and customer expectations while often lowering overhead costs. Let’s take a look at why the cloud has become a contact center’s new best friend.
The cloud opens up new possibilities for how contact centres might provide their services. Because the cloud is not bound by physical boundaries, it makes no difference where your workforce is located. They can provide customer assistance from anywhere at any time, whether they are remote, on-site, or anywhere in between. The cloud is also very scalable, making it simple for contact centre managers to respond to seasonal or demand fluctuations.
The cloud may also provide greater reporting and analytics capabilities to contact centres, allowing them to monitor diverse data—such as agent performance, downtime, call volume, and customer information—all in one spot rather than in separate silos. This sort of data access has the potential to drastically alter the way contact centres are handled, allowing for a greater emphasis on maximising efficiency and improving the customer experience.
Contact centres that use the cloud can save money in the long term by depending less on physical infrastructure, having greater flexibility for a remote workforce, and leveraging advanced reporting and data analytics technologies.
Self-Service
Customer service used to be a two-person contact between an agent and a customer. Nevertheless, the desire for additional self-service alternatives has changed this dynamic, with 81% of customers expecting firms to offer more self-service options than they presently do.
Conversational AI, which drives chatbots and interactive voice response (IVR) systems, is one approach to expand self-service possibilities. Today’s AI-powered chatbots and IVR systems can handle a wide range of client requests without involving a human representative. Chatbots and IVR systems, unlike human agents, can provide round-the-clock help and manage several client enquiries at the same time, allowing contact centres to minimise service costs while still satisfying consumer demands.
Yet, there is a catch: Consumers are only pleased with these self-service choices if their problems are satisfactorily resolved. When chatbots are inefficient or cause problems for your clients, they wind up producing more problems than they solve.
Quality Assurance
Cloud and self-service investments cannot be fully exploited without a concomitant emphasis on quality assurance (QA). Just as you wouldn’t extend your house without expanding your insurance coverage, you shouldn’t grow your contact centre without first ensuring that your systems are operational so that your clients receive the assistance they require, regardless of the channel they choose.
QA necessitates automated, continuous testing and monitoring across all customer touchpoints and the software development life cycle. Continuous testing, in a nutshell, analyses the quality and stability of software at each level. Organizations may discover and resolve issues early in the development cycle, before they become too costly and hard to fix, by regularly testing, monitoring, and upgrading the software that runs contact centres.
When conversational AI is added to the mix, continuous testing becomes substantially more challenging. Unlike voice channels, which offer set alternatives for a caller’s reply, such as “say/press 1 for savings” or “say/press 2 for checking,” conversational AI necessitates understanding and testing all possible responses.
No matter how smart your contact center’s Intelligence and analytics are, they’re useless if you can’t consistently provide a fantastic customer experience. Whether it’s poor voice quality or downtime, it will have a negative impact on your customer happiness, brand reputation, and bottom line.
In the face of ongoing economic uncertainty, company leaders must make strategic investments that will promote process improvements and cost reductions. Because of technological advancements, today’s contact centres have practically limitless options to develop quickly and improve the customer experience. Yet, based on my CX experience, I believe that only contact centres that embrace the cloud, engage in self-service, and prioritise QA will gain the most. Contact centre managers may minimise expenses and lay the scene for future success by migrating to the cloud and embracing automation.
Source: Forbes Technology Council
