Customer call centers are out and customer engagement centers are in.
But what does this mean, exactly?
The Face of Next Generation Contact Centers
Customer contact centers are often reactive and focused on putting out customer fires. Whether the customer is calling for support or just has a question about a product before purchase, the typical experience is often more about frustration.
Through leveraging the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation, forward-thinking companies can go beyond just putting out customer fires. The traditional customer contact center can then become a customer engagement center. This has a direct impact on profits, as even small improvements in customer service can have dramatic and positive impacts on revenue. Research shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can create a 95% increase in profits.
How to Make Your Contact Center a Customer Engagement Center
Customer experience (CX) can be improved in a number of ways, and with technologies like AI, this is becoming easier. Here are some areas to focus on:
1. Increased Personalization
Personalization is all about making a customer feel valued by presenting them with information that is important to them. AI tools can help drive accurate personalization for customers to make them feel like the company is listening to them.
2. Continuous Improvement Driven by Data
As part of that drive towards personalization, your company should be collecting and analyzing important rich data on customer preferences and purchasing behaviors. Using data, the customer care team can see which features are driving the most issues.
They can identify which parts of the product are heavily used and which ones are largely ignored by customers. This data can be used across an organization to enhance the usability and positioning of a product to the market. Continuous improvement is then driven by real metrics instead of just guesswork.
3. Upselling and Cross-selling
A customer engagement center can do more than just put out fires, it can serve as another marketing vehicle. If done appropriately, upselling and cross-selling can increase revenue. This is best done, however, using data-driven tools that offer the best in customer insight. The best intelligent contact center platform will connect customer information and marketing efforts, to give agents a full view of the customer’s experience with your business.
Using this information your customer care team can strategically use your customer contact center for upselling and cross-selling. Understanding your customer needs moves sales into a more consultative space, where customer service teams can understand the clients’ needs and provide solutions. Happy customers will be more receptive to targeted upsell opportunities.
4. Developing an Actionable Customer Engagement Strategy
All of the above must be part of a comprehensive and actionable customer engagement strategy. This should be a long-term strategy that looks at how current and future technologies can be best leveraged to help improve customer engagement.
The strategy should also be holistic, not piecemeal. If your company has a hodge-podge of legacy IT systems holding back innovation while a few modern tools are just patched on top, that is not good enough. Your customer engagement strategy must coincide with a strong IT strategy to be truly effective.
Improve Customer Experience Through a Technology-Driven Approach
Improving customer experience is not a mystery. Create a strategy to make your customer contact center into a responsive, personal customer engagement center. The benefits include reducing costs while generating more satisfied customers that will spend more time and money with your company.
