For all of us who are members in good standing of the contact center community, and for everyone who deals with a contact center as well, of all of the metrics we use for judging the customer experience (CX) the common denominator in most cases is TIME.
This is true on the contactor or contactee end of interactions. It is true because as people with questions or problems we want answers and we want them from knowledgeable resources (machine-based or human) ASAP. On the business end of an interaction contact center administrators are judged by how fast they resolve customer challenges, and how best they use the time of their resources to do so. It is why as much as I am a huge fan of the Rolling Stones golden oldie, “Time is On My Side,” it can only be if I have both information about how long things will take and at least a feeling of control over options I can exercise based on estimates.
Unfortunately, for all of us modern life is not so much about time being on our side but rather is much more (pardon the pun) in tune with one of my favorite songs from the 1960’s by the Canadian rock band, Guess Who, “No Time.”
As you can see I have embedded the long version of this classic so other generations are exposed to this popular song and can enjoy it, but if you don’t have time to listen a few of the lyrics say it all.
On my way to better things
(No time left for you)
I'll find myself some wings
(No time left for you)
Distant roads are calling me
(No time left for you)
Mm-da, mm-da, mm-da, mm-da, mm-da
All of the above is segue into something that actually delighted me and got me thinking about time and contact centers in 2015. In my Internet travels I happened upon a blog about app store growth on the popular appfigures.com website. You can read that item at your leisure, but first notice at the top the indication that it is a 4 minute read.
That’s right, the author informs us how much of the scarce resource, TIME, it will take to read the posting. Wow! Now that is an interesting approach to enhancing the customer experience, or certainly at minimum showing respect which is something I wish the doctors I frequent would learn.
This got me to thinking about the year ahead.
What if every contact center we all called or tried to chat with not only had deployed the technology for telling us how long we might wait (now increasingly common), but gave us the option of saying a time and a preference for a contact back and the name and contact information of who would be getting in touch with us? In fact, what if WebRTC were used to really make the choices both simple but also provided ease of use for bringing in collaboration tools and media that would facilitate problem resolution that much faster?
Think of it. This is a win/win. I don’t sit around waiting for the next available agent, and the contact center gets to select the appropriate resource and tools for engaging me in a way that gets my issue taken care of rapidly while keeping me happy. Who knows, at least in my case it would cut down on the number of times I say “supervisor” this year.
Is this wishful thinking? It is on the technology adoption side by those who are our destinations. However, we all know that cultural as well as technology change takes time. What this means is that we can all hold out the hope that all of the C-level talk about being customer-centric and investing in improving the customer experience is more action and less talk in 2015.
What I do know is that time is not on the side of those who fail to understand that my time and not just theirs is important.