We are entering an experience economy where customers are not just looking for the right service at the right time but looking for one that is engaging and immersive. Contact centers are a powerhouse to deliver that exceptional experience across the entire customer journey starting from awareness, interest to purchase, service and advocacy. Contact Center Customer Experience can be enhanced every step of the way as customers interact with the brand. Here are some quick wins on customer experience and tips towards achieving those.
- Quick to Respond – Time is the new currency and the biggest impact on customer experience. With improved global omnichannel routing and implementing self-service for the simple use cases, the wait time is tremendously reduced definitely leaving a great impact.
- Easy to use – One of the biggest pain points with some technologies like IVR is that they become so unusable. Working on intuitive, flat hierarchy IVR scripts will be key success factor. When it comes to any self-service technology be it IVR or AI driven chat bots, simplicity and ease of use definitely score high on the experience chart.
- Resolve issues – Investing in unified agent desktop and tight integrations with various applications provides agents the toolset to help solve the customer problem. Nothing is more impactful for a customer than a first contact resolution. A true and enhanced omnichannel solution can help agents pivot the customers from their current channel of interaction to one which can best solve it. If it is an issue with modem, you are better off to pivot the chat request to video call and resolve it.
- Is proactive – Customers want to be notified on any issues that are impending. They would rather hear the bad news ahead in time and plan for it, rather than fix after a disaster. Notifications across multiple channels will help them be more prepared and prevent bad experiences in becoming worse.
- Personalizes experiences – Simple mechanisms like configuring IVR for the product set the customers have bought or referencing the previous transactions are great customer delight moments. Invest in analytics across channels to know which channel a customer prefers and work on a tight CRM integration to funnel all pertinent information about the customer to the right agent at the right time.
- Has empathetic and capable employees – Beyond technology, it is important for customers to feel that they are being heard and have the right set of people to work on the task at hand. Hiring and training the agents is a key component to success. Also routing the customers to the right agents through skills based and more advanced routing mechanisms, will ensure the right skill match for the agent selected and provide better resolution rates.
- Knows me irrespective of channels – With the proliferation of channels it becomes even more important for customers to get a consistency of experience across channels. Not repeating themselves in every channel is the first step. A true omnichannel solution will ensure all the interactions across channels are shared with not just agents in contact center but possibly to billing experts, sales people and many other stakeholders.
Customer experience is the new tool for competitive differentiation and contact centers can drive the biggest impact on enhanced customer experience. Learn more on how your contact center can be the one driving enhanced customer experience.
