Developing a Better Customer Experience Through the Contact Center

Credit: Twenty29
Credit: Twenty29

Today’s customer has different needs and priorities. There is a higher level of customer demands, and businesses need to be aware of that. The customer experience (CX) has changed too, and rising to meet those changing landscapes’ needs is a barrier, but not one that cannot be overcome with the correct methodology.

Late last year, a report by McKinsey identified three areas of new tendencies and expectations of CX. They are:

  • Build aspiration and purpose
  • Transform the business
  • Enable the transformation

Executing customer-experience transformations is no easy task, but with these three core building blocks, companies can aim to achieve new capabilities and exhibit them with confidence for a competitive advantage.

The three building blocks of customer-experience transformation.
The three building blocks of customer-experience transformation.

Build aspiration and purpose

Smooth, enjoyable, and loyal are three areas that are essential for customer journeys. But to have such aspirations can not be achieved by measurement and tracking alone. Instead, transparent links need to be connected as part of a general roadmap in the process.

When it comes to customer service, the contact center is the first point of contact. If your agents have a hard time with the tools they are using to provide a consistent and fluid experience, then the customer’s outcome will not be much better.

By creating an excellent customer experience, then you can get off to a winning start. That desire can then form your roadmap of actionable steps. If you already have a roadmap, then reimagine the steps if needs be to deliver on the brand expectation set by the customer so you can set it for your teams.

Transform the business

McKinsey’s analysts claim that remodelling the customer experience must produce an agile, cross-functional team with all-encompassing technical expertise and consciousness in perpetual betterment.

Cross-functional teams examine what clients require and how adequately to address that. They insist that they exhibit innovative thoughts and ideas to discuss pain points and prioritize essential metrics. Once developed, the team distributes them over the company with integration into the corporate technology stack.

Cloud contact center software allows for comprehensive collaboration between contact center representatives and additional business divisions. Providing an internal directory with omnipresence indicators, so if an agent needs to reach a company expert to answer a question, they can.

Enable the transformation

Contact Center leaders and C-suite level executives who implement such transformation need to continue forward-thinking initiatives so that when the next phase of development arrives, it is possible to build on the capabilities of the existing. This momentum fosters a customer-centric mindset instilled within the workforce from top to bottom.

Teams talking with laptop.
Credit: Twenty20

Why should you measure the success of your contact center?

Astute contact center supervisors spot trends in analytics and address those points to stem them before they mature to more extensive problems or perceived chances to become profitable. Having a complete view of the metrics that allow you to foresee these outcomes is necessary. It is important to consider which metrics within the data indicate where it’s going well, particularly in the areas of customer satisfaction, average handling time, and first contact resolution.

What customers want

Satisfying customers is largely dependent on resources and how agile teams can utilize them to meet expectations. So enabling teams with the right strategy and tools to maximize agents’ skillset is equally important from an employer and organizational perspective.

Customers with low-level enquiries and frequently asked questions are often the simplest issues to resolve. However, this can only be said as long as the clarity of the answers is evident, or that an agent can manage channels effectively once the request goes beyond a chatbot.

Collaboration and communication

Explore the latest contact center best practices and see how they can work for you. Reliability should be at the top of your list. Customers want to connect fast and do not desire to deal with voice quality issues or lack of historical data when in considerably lengthy conversations.

Efficient channel management can make a huge improvement for your employee’s experience, but also for your customers. An “omnichannel strategy”, whereby using a unified platform helps you connect with your customers on their channel of choice, can be optimized through phone, webchat, email, social media, or another digital channel.

The knock-on benefits of this are effective team collaboration and communication, improved average handling time thanks to increased productivity, and less-overwhelmed staff with greater satisfaction.

Conclusion

Businesses need to continuously observe and realize what customers want and need. Know how your customers and prospects want to be served based on different situations—making a purchase, getting information, or solving a problem.

Technological initiatives should make collaboration easy with dexterity and efficiency. Adopt a solution that will meet the needs of your teams to provide a better experience through your strategy.

Customer experience transformation can be achieved with initiatives that stem from the implementation of these three building blocks, which set out a roadmap, measure performance, and identify customer needs.

Read More: Contact Center: How It Can Help Your Business in Many Ways