According to Forrester when a company makes customers feel appreciated:
- 76% will keep their business with the brand
- 80% will spend more with the company
- 87% will recommend the organization to friends and family members
These statistics underscore that it’s more important than ever for companies to prioritize the customer experience. But are they including the back office in addition to the contact center in their view of the all-important customer journey?
Our Chief Product Officer, Rene Matla, along with our customers Nick Baak, Chief Operating Officer from the innovative European digital payments provider In3, and Jan Gapinski, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Owner of Swedish customer service BPO and CX consultancy provider Gradén Mattsson participated in a recent CCW Europe podcast to answer this and other questions about the current contact center market and how customer experience is changing.
New and Available Technologies Can Fuel Contact Center Innovation
One of the biggest takeaways to emerge from the discussion is that today’s technologies are capable of driving significant contact center innovation. Omnichannel contact centers, conversational analytics and intelligent process automation are now providing companies with the tools they need to deliver a customer experience that stands out from the competition—while simultaneously reducing costs.
The problem is that too many organizations still have a siloed perspective and fail to consider the contact center, and the back office, as both integral parts of the overall customer journey. CX-savvy companies that have embraced this comprehensive viewpoint, however, are reaping numerous benefits. This includes drawing upon customer service data from across the company to optimize experiences or using the contact center as an early warning system for supply chain issues, product issues, or similar problems.
Companies Must Empower Agents with the Right Tools
Tooling is another critical point discussed in the podcast. The average company wouldn’t think twice about arming a frontline retail associate or healthcare administrator with all the tools necessary to resolve every customer problem. Yet, a contact center agent is just as much a frontline employee as these and similar roles—but is rarely given all the tools required to quickly answer questions or address problems that arise outside of the contact center.
If organizations want to put the customer experience at the heart of their contact center operations, it’s essential that they equip agents with the tools to address problems quickly and the ability to make easy and informed connections with employees in other parts of the business, including the back office. In addition, today’s process automation solutions are also empowering agents by removing manual and repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on more complex or more valuable interactions.
Connecting Channels is Critical
Finally, companies must ensure all their customer channels are connected so that agents have the information most critical to efficiently resolving issues—over any channel, including today’s critical digital channels, such as messaging platforms. The legacy approach of analyzing channel-specific interactions versus the end-to-end customer journey across channels is much less impactful than showing your team that a customer has recently encountered challenges when attempting online checkout or received an error message when initiating a return, for example.
Listen to the podcast from what Rene, Nick and Jan have to say about what the future holds for customer experience. And if you’re interested in learning how QuandaGo can help you modernize your contact center operations with automation, please get in touch!
