The right contact center technology can help enhance the customer experience and create competitive advantages.
An organization’s success hinges on the customer experience. Although satisfied customers tend to become loyal customers, the reverse is almost inevitable. In various studies, more than half of U.S. consumers have said they quit doing business with an organization after just one negative experience. Worse yet, they are likely to share their negative experience with friends and colleagues.
For many organizations, the contact center is the focal point of the customer experience. However, delivering an optimal experience is difficult given ever-increasing call volumes. The average contact center handles 4,400 calls per month, and 61 percent of contact center leaders say call volumes have increased despite the availability of AI and self-service tools.
To meet these demands, increase efficiency and optimize customer service, smart organizations are investing in five key areas.
Omnichannel Communications
Customers today expect to be able to communicate with businesses by phone, email, live chat, text, mobile apps or social media. Although most organizations now support multiple communication channels, they often struggle to effectively integrate them into a single omnichannel.
For example, an integrated omnichannel platform allows customers to begin with one mode of communication, such as a live chat, and then escalate to a phone call without having to start over and rehash the same information with a new agent. This enables agents to engage customers on their terms with proper context. Omnichannel also enables a unified contact center workflow by enabling agents to handle a variety of channels through a single interface.
Advanced Self-Service Tools
The contact center industry has long faced a labor shortage, and various studies show that agent turnover rates range from 30 percent to 45 percent. Keeping skilled and experienced agents happy should be a top priority of any contact center. Self-service tools can help do that, while also easing the labor crunch.
Self-service tools enable customers to solve many common problems on their own, and today’s advanced, AI-driven tools can handle increasingly complex queries. At the same time, self-service tools allow agents to focus on higher-level tasks, which leads to greater job satisfaction. Of course, self-service tools — even those powered by AI — can’t resolve every issue. The contact center platform should make it easy to switch from self-service to a human agent on any channel.
Cloud-Based Contact Centers
Cloud-based virtual contact centers support agents in various locations instead of one central location. It gives organizations access to the latest contact center technology and applications without a large capital investment. It also provides the flexibility to scale operations up or down to meet seasonal demands.
By decentralizing staffing with work-from-home agents, virtual contact centers also make it easier to support international “follow the sun” operations that require 24x7 staffing. Because agents don’t need to live in close proximity to the office, organizations have access to a broader talent pool.
Analytics
Advanced analytics platforms allow organizations to explore data from CRM systems, email, voice mail and other customer feedback sources to generate insights into customer preferences and behaviors. For example, organizations can learn about customer demographics, shopping habits, buying preferences, spending limits, churn rates and more. This information can be used to create personalized experiences.
Sentiment analysis evaluates speech and text using natural language processing and computational linguistics. The objective is to gain a better understanding of what customers think about a company’s brand, products or service based on words, phrases, voice inflections, rate of speech and other cues.
AI-Driven Personalization
According to a McKinsey study, 71 percent of consumers expect personalized interactions and 76 percent get frustrated when they don’t get them. The good news is that AI allows organizations to analyze customer data and tailor experiences in real time.
With generative AI, organizations can provide personalized recommendations and messaging and customize solutions and services based on the customer’s needs and preferences. Organizations can analyze customer behavior and feedback to identify issues and pain points so contact center agents can fine-tune their interactions. By making customers feel valued and understood, organizations can boost revenue and brand loyalty.
The Way Forward
Customer service drives business success. Poor customer experiences translate to lost business, reduced revenue and damaged reputations. As organizations look to improve the customer experience in 2025 and beyond, they are investing in new technologies to reshape their contact centers. The right tools can optimize the contact center and help minimize customer churn.
