Contact Centre Operations
Identifying potential areas of improvement
Consumer preferences are driving the need for changes to the
traditional customer service model. In fact, relying solely upon the “voice
only” contact channel, which tightly controls the customer’s path and available
course of action to address a concern, is quickly losing favour with consumers.
Consumer communication changes and expectations are causing
the fundamental rethinking of contact centre conventional wisdom. Here are some
views, shared by CCT, Avaya and other industry consultants and analysts:
- Voice, in today’s fast paced global
marketplace, could well become the least preferred customer contact channel.
- Existing best practises, processes and
procedures surrounding longstanding the support of voice-centric contact
centres are not aligned with customer desires and concerns that need to
be accounted for in a multi-channel environment.
-
Customers using multiple self service,
web searches, social networking forums, wikis and so on may actually know
more about what they have engaged with a contact centre for than the
(typical) voice-only agent does.
- For emerging customer segments, the contact
centre will become the last resort for help when all other self-service
options, typically available 24x7, might happen to be offline.
- The collaboration, learning and experience
within a trusted circle of peers, colleagues, friends and experts is insulating
customers from traditional branding activities.
- Contact centres must understand the ongoing
“context” of customer interactions – even before the inbound
person-to-person interaction actually happens.
- Over time, managing customer contact will
take on more of the traits of proactive campaign management (outbound) –
with a real time, event-based, and one-to-one relationship.
- Organisations that continue to be organised
around a siloed view of the same customer (no cross-functional data sharing)
will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
Enhancing Customer Service
In Contact Babel’s 2009 UK Contact Centre Decision Makers’ Guide, contact centre managers highlighted that increasing customer satisfaction will be the number one focus for them in 2010.
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Improving Performance
Getting the best out of your agents is paramount if you want your operation to be a top performing contact centre. Agent performance and motivation is key to customer satisfaction, which in turn generates customer loyalty, leading to higher profitability.
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Maximising Efficiency
In times of economic difficulty, getting the most out of your existing resources is paramount to the success of any operation. In an industry whose workload is determined by varying call levels, high levels of staff turnover and multiple shift patterns, maximising agent availability is vital.
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"I have dealt with CCT for over 6 years and feel that everyone within CCT always has a professional and friendly approach that makes dealing with you very easy."
Call Centre Manager, Weight Watchers
Leveraging New Media
In a modern world of mobile phones, email, web chat and social networking, customers now have multiple ways of connecting with your business. And they rightly expect the same customer experience across all varying contact methods.
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Increasing Profitability
Contact centres are increasingly being seen as “cost centres” within their enterprises. Contact centre managers are now being tasked with improving the profitability of their operations.
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Monitoring Customer Interactions
Within contact centres across the globe, there are millions of customer interactions every day. But how can you record, monitor and analyse these interactions. Also how can you ensure that your business is compliant when it comes to the latest financial regulations or PCI compliance statements?
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