Every year brings new challenges, some big and some small, some expected and some not so; whatever it is, it’s important to know in which direction the wind is blowing. Contact centers are constantly being beleaguered with such challenges, hence, it behooves that they set their priorities straight before they strategize. Intradiem, the provider of intraday management solutions, has outlined a few trends that contact centers need to keep in mind.
Whatever be the era, the customer always steals the limelight as businesses pivot around customer satisfaction and customer experience. That’s not going to change in 2014, but contact centers would need to focus on mapping the entire customer journey right from the first interaction to the sale and post-sale. Tracing this gives contact centers an idea of how customers feel about engaging with agents, what prompts them to buy a particular product or service, and the kind of experiences that they share with others. Understanding this could the key to retaining customers and building loyalty.
Social media is too strong a medium to be pushed into the background, and Intradiem believes that it’s great for providing quality customer care. However, tackling customers using social media is no ordinary game; it requires a different mindset and agents need to have the right skills and proficiency to handle customer queries. The correct agent can do wonders.
The provider of management solutions emphasizes that customization and personalization are tools that will drive loyalty. That’s readily understandable, for a personal touch makes the customer feel important. Knowing their customer journeys, their history and their personal information helps to understand the customer better and respond in such a way that the customer feels special enough to want to stay aboard.
Contact centers are plagued with interruptions, but need to keep things moving in spite of everything. But for this to happen, they must be optimized to ensure that agents are uniformly updated on matters of policy, products and services. This will ensure consistency and correctness in replies, no matter what.
Big data appears to be becoming bigger and more important and as the number of channels of communication increase, the volume of big data increases. Contact center agents need to be equipped with the required tools that will help them use this data to their advantage.
Oft repeated ideas, none of which is new, yet contact centers will do well to take heed.