If you’re planning to move your contact center to the cloud, or just interested in improving your technology solution, think about the opportunity to transform your contact center, not just replace it.
In many cases established policies and processes were created because of the limitations of legacy technologies – not because they improved customer or agent experience. There are so many new technologies that there’s no reason just to accept that “it’s just the way we’ve always done it.”
Overflow queues are a great example- many who know me know how much I dislike this practice. Once upon a time, there was a good reason for overflow queues due to limitations in early systems. This came at a cost though – it made a mess out of reports. Once skills-based routing came about the limitations were gone, but many people still insisted on having overflow queues. As a result, accurate reports are often difficult to come by. Even more important, delays are caused for the millions of calls and chats that could have been answered by someone who could have helped the customer more efficiently.
There is no better time to reassess both the customer and agent experience than during a platform change. Legacy system limitations often caused agents to have a terrible experience in order to provide a customer with a better one. I’ve even seen the opposite where customers were made to jump through a million hoops to ensure the agent had a simple experience. I have never understood either of these approaches. It’s easily understood why we should optimize the customer experience. But giving your employees a great experience also increases efficiency and helps them serve the customer even better. With today’s software there’s no reason why you have to choose between customer and agent.
New methods of communication are another consideration. It’s not a “call center” anymore – it’s a contact center or even a customer care solution. Many people now prefer chat, email, or other text based communication over traditional voice calling. Many of today’s tools offer these methods, however, many have treated these new interactions just like voice, or otherwise haven’t given thought to how to manage these new ways to communicate. Gather data to see what your users want most. Is it chat from a webpage? Is it email that knows what they’re looking for help on? Find out what your users desire, and then give that to them before one of your competitors does. People will take convenience every day of the week.
The shift in the industry from on-premise (solely) to cloud or hybrid deployments of new generations of software is the perfect time to analyze these and many more policies. Make the changes to get the transformation your users want – and your business needs.
