The global health crisis fashioned a new industry-wide reality and brought a decade’s worth of digital advancements in just a few months. Nowhere was this trend more pronounced than contact centers which responded and adapted to change swiftly. But in today’s hyper-digital and connected world, that’s not enough. Richard McCrossan, Digital-AI Lead for Genesys lists down four hot trends for contact center leaders that can set them up for long-term success.Â
The global contact center industry employs millions of people, most of whom have not had the “work from anywhere†flexibility that so many employees across other industries have come to appreciate. Until COVID-19 shocked contact centers across the globe, customer service was a mostly location-based activity with staff convened in large facilities for faster onboarding and closer collaboration.
When the pandemic hit, businesses scrambled to determine how they could shift their contact center employees to a completely virtual workforceOpens a new window . For many, quick adoption of cloud-based systems was the way forward, giving team members access to the tools and resources needed to help customers from the safety of their own homes. At the same time, moving to the cloud-enabled them to more easily adopt new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to help simplify agents’ jobs.
The pandemic also exposed the reality of the state of digital engagement. Most brands have been talking about digital engagement for some time, but initiatives have side projects to the core customer engagement operation. But due to COVID, many customers now prefer or are required to interact with companies through their digital domain. It has revealed the lack of preparation for digital engagement at scale.
While we’re all yearning to return to “normal,†some of the adjustments contact centers have made have serious staying power.Â
Read on to learn what trends we believe contact centers will embrace in the post-pandemic future.
Learn More: How to Improve Remote Sales With Virtual Customer Meetings
1. Working From Anywhere
The COVID-19 shutdown served as a giant fast-forward button, giving us foresight into the future of work. We quickly learned that home (or otherwise shuttered hotelsOpens a new window ) is more than where the heart is – it’s where work gets done. And now, after finding our virtual stride, it begs the question, if customer service operations can continue functioning smoothly, is there a compelling reason to require employees to return to the office?
Companies are starting to see cost savings and benefits associated with teleworking, including the ability to recruit regardless of geographic location. This is making some consider possible permanent remote working options, or perhaps a hybrid hub-and-spokes model that allows quick mobilization of dedicated remote agents to supplement on-site teams as needed.
Post-COVID, there may be an increase in totally virtual contact centersOpens a new window , although some will return to their old model requiring on-premises agents and systems. However, smart organizations will embrace the flexibility offered by the cloud and maintain options for remote working scenarios. Managers will use physical proximity more effectively by leveraging shared spaces for team-building activities or on-boarding.
A flexible workforce combined with the scalability delivered through the cloud is the future of the contact center, if the right processes and systems are in place to enable this hybrid situation. Luckily, the same cloud-based systems that allow for the flexibility of agent location are also built to improve the efficiency of call routing and align agent scheduling with demand. These changes mean that contact centers can better meet metrics like reduced handle times and first-call resolution.
Learn More: Will Virtual Contact Centers Go Mainstream? Industry Experts Weigh In
2. Empathy Now More Than Ever
It’s not just contact centers that will face post-pandemic changes. A recent survey by McKinseyOpens a new window emphasized how customer expectations are also changing during the COVID outbreak. While companies typically concentrate on delivering efficient and engaging customer experiences, consumers are mainly concerned with essential needs such as safety, security, and everyday convenience.
And, although empathy has always been a building block of customer experience, in moments of crisis, people want even more understanding and speed from customer support employees. COVID has put more focus on interpersonal communication and delivering the empathetic human touch to make interactions more pleasant for customers as well as less stressful for employees.
Mining available customer data for insights into behaviors, tendencies, likes, and dislikes in order to personalize communications will make customers feel recognized and understood. What are their major concerns? What type of support or convenience will make their lives easier or more enjoyable?
Businesses that will shine in the post-pandemic world will be the ones that truly know their customers, understand their concerns and preferences (sometimes without being told), and provide them with the support and convenience that makes their lives easier.
Learn More: 3 Considerations for Cloud-Based Contact Centers
3. A Greater Emphasis on Digital Service
The pandemic accelerated a trend toward digital experiences that was already in progress — online shopping, self-service, home delivery, and drive-through and curbside collection. Organizations now face the challenge of determining which shifts in consumer behavior, like the preference for “contactless†operations, are likely to continue past 2020.
Even before the virus onset, forward-looking companies were giving customers various self-service options — community forums, knowledge bases, chatbots, and automated solutions, for example. However, self-service is primarily a company-focused initiative about reducing cost rather than a customer-focused initiative, and it will increase customer frustration if it’s rushed. (This is particularly true for agents focused on selling, who have a greatly reduced ability to engage face-to-face as a result of the pandemic.)
As Forrester Research notedOpens a new window , a long-term COVID-19 impact is that businesses will increasingly look to automation to avoid service interruptions. Many businesses have already increased their use of automation to streamline processes that were previously bottlenecked by human intervention, safeguarding customers from frustrating moments spent “on hold†for simple tasks.Â
Moving beyond the pandemic, we anticipate even more adoption of automation, although even just moving agent channels to digital is a challenge for most companies. SurveysOpens a new window already show that younger generations prefer to interact digitally. The key for organizations will be to make it easy for customers to choose self-service channels or navigate to a human employee without a hitch.Â
Those that get it right will win big, namely in the form of happier customers who find it easier and faster to resolve matters on their own.Â
4. A “Blended†Legacy of the Pandemic
We’ll also see an increase in the use of AI-enabled technologies to cut response times and deliver the increasingly personalized customer experiences consumers now expect. As the amount of data flowing through modern customer experience environments continues to grow, businesses need the means to harness that data so they can provide better, more personalized experiences to customers – and that’s where AI comes in.
Not only can AI be used to automate rote tasks and reduce agent workloads, but its predictive capabilities also enable contact centers to identify customer needs as well as how and when employees should intervene. This helps to drive more favorable interactions and outcomes. In addition, AI-enabled technologies can assist customer-facing personnel to quickly find the information they need to respond effectively, speed up their decisions, and make it easier to advise customers on the appropriate products and services to meet their needs.
This blended approach of human employees with automated options will accelerate even more quickly in the post-COVID era. And it will not be disrupted by the hybrid teams of on-site and remote contact center agents that will also be a legacy of the pandemic.
Let us know if you liked this article on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!