Delivering a great CX experience in the evolving contact centre industry

I recently co-hosted a webinar with Fifth Quadrant’s Head of Consulting, Stephanie Bauer, to discuss the release of its annual Contact Centre Benchmark Study & Report, where we unpacked operational performance, customer experience (CX) measurement and engagement in the industry.

Clear themes weaving throughout the discussion with business leaders from a wide band of frontline-heavy organisations, was the various ways digital technologies are adding new complexities, challenges and opportunities to overall CX delivery; as well as how customer journeys are becoming less and less linear.

With the call centre industry shifting away from traditional approaches to voice communications, an emerging focus for the sector is now on understanding the new channel environment for interactions – and the direct implications this has on the customer journey and customer experience.

Here are 3 key CX highlights that contact centre leaders need to have front of mind to perform in this fast-changing business landscape.

Changing nature of phone interactions.

Call centre interactions via telephony are declining, but still a preferred method of communication for some consumers.

With web chat, social platforms and mobile apps growing channels for CX interactions – and an increase in self-service options for customers, complex conversations via telephone are now on the rise.

These critical conversations are setting an organisation’s frontline agents apart from others, as those people who are attuned and knowledgeable in delivering high-level phone-based customer service are fast becoming CX secret weapons in businesses.

Handling time is on the rise.

One area the organisations need to get right is the handle time for inbound call centres.

There’s been an increase in the extension of time in these types of interactions because contact agents can’t get the right information at the right time. Longer handling time is problematic due to its negative impact on CX.

One way to rein in handling time is to introduce a sophisticated knowledge management system.

Often, contact agents prolong a call due to a lack of visible information, which is a result of a poor management system. Organisations should have systems to do the searching for the customer, not the agent.

Actionable insights are paramount.

To deliver a great customer experience, organisations need to know what they do well and where the can improve the customer journey.

Startingly, there are many businesses that still don not have CX measurements in place, reducing their ability to operate the business from a CX lens.

The changing business environment, underpinned by the introduction of advanced technologies, calls for a greater focus on measuring the customer experience and acting on those insights.

With customers feeling survey fatigue, call centres can adopt speech and text analytics tools to generate a higher response rate and measure customer satisfaction.

In CX environments, customer journeys are more fluid than ever before and now include touchpoints across multiple new online channels.

The differentiator for organisations as the importance placed on delivering a unique customer experience across every channel and every platform.