Tips for Embracing a Digital-First Approach in Contact Centers

Contact centers are faced with constant change, and in order to adapt and thrive, they must modernize. Chris Small, Vice President, Head of Roadside Managed Services Product, Agero says in a changed world, a strong digital strategy is key for driving better experiences for both customers and agents, weathering future storms, and achieving business growth. In this post, Small dives deep into all the aspects of the ‘new normal for contact centers and what it takes to build a digitized contact center. 

As more and more companies digitally transform, a key focus area for that metamorphosis is (and should be) the contact center, traditionally one of the most labor-intensive and analog aspects of many industries. Digital transformation of the contact center, done well, provides a better experience for not only the customer but for agents too.

How can contact centers get started on that digital journey? A critical first step is mapping the value stream:  what do customers care most about? How can we deliver a brand-winning experience in that context? If you let the answers to these questions be your North Star, they’ll set your transformation on the right path from the start.  

For our roadside assistance industry (and our partners in automotive and insurance), that could be a customer returning to the Ford dealership to buy another car a year from now, or a USAA customer renewing their policy while sharing the positive experience they had during a roadside event.   

Learn More: A COO’s Perspective on How to Think Differently About DX in Contact Centers

Setting Contact Center Agents Up for Success With Digital Tools 

When digitizing a contact center, you need to holistically consider the various stakeholders and assess how you can accommodate all of their contributions to that value stream as part of a seamless end-to-end customer experience. The primary stakeholder is certainly the customer, but there are other audiences to consider as well.  

To continue the roadside assistance analogy, those other stakeholders include service providers (e.g., towing companies), dealerships, repair facilities, as well as insurance, automotive, fleet, and motor club clients. In e-commerce, these might include merchant partners, shipping and logistics, suppliers, etc.

A critical stakeholder, of course, is the contact center associates; in many ways, their experience is as critical as that of the customer. In fact, a better agent experience will ultimately equate to a better experience for the customer.

When it comes to digital transformation, that agent/customer relationship dictates that the agent needs to “see” what the customer sees, and the digital experience itself should be mirrored between the two (albeit with added capabilities on the agent side).  Companies often make the mistake of introducing digital channels to capitalize on the customer experience, while forgetting to contemplate its connection to the contact center.

Yet marrying the customer and agent experience provides true end-to-end digitization.  In particular, organizations must identify the various communication channels (and supporting technologies) and understand how to supplement them for the agent – with a specific focus and emphasis on those channels that provide the best experience. In our roadside industry, we rely on mobile APIs and conversational automation technology, allowing contacts to either initiate from a mobile app directly or quickly transfer from call to app-like digital experience (there is also a surprising but growing customer appetite for chat and SMS messaging).

Learn More: Want to Elevate CX? Eliminate Background Noise in Contact Centers

Combat Agent Turnover With the Right Tools & Training  

By focusing on augmenting these specific channels, communications are streamlined and simplified.  It doesn’t matter if a customer called in using the mobile app, went through a digital experience with the mobile API, or reached out via text – or switched between forms of contact during the engagement – an agent will have holistic and centralized access to all relevant information and be able to respond to the customer using their preferred (typically most recent) form of communication.

When considering and selecting communication channels and technologies, place a primary emphasis on ease of use for customers; fewest clicks possible, seamless UI experience, etc. Focus on the customer’s desired end result, eliminating all extraneous steps and details that don’t contribute value or clarity to that result. Next, assess and fine-tune ease of use through usability studies, which is especially important in customer-facing mobile apps that can go awry in a hurry.  Focus groups and other third parties can be of huge help in evaluating UX and UI decisions.

Three particular aspects of contact centers that are ripe for digitization include volatility response, learning and development, and performance measurement.

Volatility introduces volume spikes or lulls, directly impacting contact center staffing and scheduling (as well as customer wait times, and thus satisfaction).  A digital strategy can minimize the variability of these peaks and valleys by essentially allowing some percentage of customer self-service (completely or in part) thereby offloading contact center volume. Moreover, this approach can allow agents to focus on the edge cases – those that are the hardest to address – which ensures a better customer experience and positions agents to feel like heroes.

The recent and unpredictable COVID-19 pandemic is a case-in-point for the relationship between digitization and volatility.  For many organizations impacted by both spikes in customer demand and a simultaneous shortage of available agents, COVID-19 turned into a customer service nightmare. Those organizations that already had a digital strategy in place, however, were much better prepared to handle the sudden variability.

Another target for digitization is agent learning and development, with a goal of helping agents quickly become more proficient. A well-considered digital L&D environment can capitalize on how agents tend to best learn quickly – including videos, guided tutorials, and more – taking the place of antiquated in-person training that tends to take agents out of the rotation for days or weeks.  

And of course, giving agents hands-on digital training with the digital technology they’ll be using directly increases familiarity with the new platform. As importantly, this digital approach lends itself to graduated and ongoing development, thus keeping agents engaged and continuously improving – an important consideration in a traditionally high-churn industry. This churn can be costly for businesses, so minimizing it will add considerable ROI to the digital transformation.

Learn More: Beyond COVID-19: 4 Hot Trends Impacting Contact Centers

Aligning Agent KPIs with Business Goals  

A final area to focus on for digital contact center transformation is performance measurement, directly tying what the customer wants (desired outcome) to tracking and assessment of agent behavior on the digital platform.  Most organizations end up creating an automated, digital scorecard for agent performance measurement. If done well and framed positively, this can have numerous add-on benefits:  ensuring the agent views success as closely aligned with customer satisfaction, simultaneously measuring performance and incentivizing agents, and ideally serving as an ongoing, real-time coaching environment.

Closing Thoughts 

These are just a few considerations for contact center transformation. As organizations assess the impact of COVID-19 and its longer-term implications, they would do well to consider this year’s uncertainty – and how a strong digital strategy for the contact center can better position them to both weather future storms and optimize for business growth.

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