CC & CX

We all know how challenging customer experience management has become these past few years. Now that most customers use a number of disjointed platforms to interact with companies, contact centres face the challenge of building and maintaining a consistent experience across multiple touch points and channels.

We live in an age where the power is in the consumer’s hands. Limited service channels are no longer a problem, and customers can easily find what they need when they need it. This presents a big challenge to many contact centres that find themselves struggling to keep up with the customer’s movements.

Despite the rapid rise of IM, email and social media use among today’s consumers, voice – the channel that started it all – is still widely used, and its popularity is not showing signs of waning. However, as more platforms emerge, the behaviour of customers will continue to evolve, and centres will need to find more ways to improve the end-to-end customer experience.

Upgrading the CX has proven to be difficult for many contact centres, especially those with an affinity for traditional processes and platforms that border on obsolete. However, this decade has seen a lot of centres that succeed at delivering a consistently excellent service that drives satisfaction and fosters customer loyalty.

It’s not just about designing a complete experience. To provide an optimal journey that positively influences CX, managing all types of interactions in every channel used throughout the customer journey is a must. This is what multi-channel contact centre services are all about, and it’s one the reasons why we’re sought after by many businesses big and small. By unifying all channels, we are able to consistently deliver a satisfactory service across the customers’ preferred avenues.

But as the expectations of customers continue to grow, so must the most advanced multi-channel contact centres continue to improve their reach and functionality. As we dissect and study customer interactions to refine our strategies, we must be prepared for obstacles that are bound to pop up every so often, and be open to slight adjustments as well as major improvements.

We can start by evaluating the channels that receive the most attention from customers, before working our way to those that are used the least. Keep in mind that a comprehensive end-to-end strategy must be based not only on the centre’s short- and long-term goals, but also on customer histories and insights.
Enhancing the CX is not just about technology and processes; it is much more holistic and requires an understanding of customer psychology.

That said, we must fully understand our customers to solidify all aspects of our people, processes and tools. To deliver an excellent end-to-end experience that drives high ROI in all channels, and ensures customer satisfaction and loyalty, we must capture the voice of the customer (VOC).

To determine the customer’s aversions, expectations and needs, equal focus must be placed on all communication channels used throughout the customer journey. When you receive poor ratings from customers, be sure to submit a quick response to alleviate dissatisfaction. Be sure to analyse feedback from interactions as well, to gain valuable insight and context for the CX.

Here’s how to leverage the VOC to improve the CX.

  • Improve how operational, survey and contact data is combined. Analysing how these three elements integrate and contribute to the CX will enable you to identify the impact of existing problems on both agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
  • Determine what causes customer dissatisfaction. Analyse customer feedback to pinpoint the range of causes of poor satisfaction levels. This will expose weak points and allow you to earmark appropriate resources to address them.

Indeed, the contact centre landscape is changing fast. What was once seen by businesses as a means for cutting costs is now at the forefront of customer engagement, evidently the result of: the rapid rise of new channels of communication; and the changing customer expectations and behaviours influenced by technologies; the evolving role of CX as an influencer and source of business value. We must be proactive in understanding our customers to succeed at building a strategic approach to better influence the end-to-end customer experience.


 

Rebecca Gunn

Rebecca Gunn is a contact centre strategist for My Virtual Workforce. Specialising in customer experience management, she always strives to bring new ideas to the table. She has more than five years of experience with contact centres and has always been passionate about her career. Rebecca spends most of her spare time reading fiction, tinkering with gadgets and occasionally playing video games. You can follow her @itsmerebeccagun.