Today’s contact centres are the customer service hub for all types of customer communications, spanning a number of channels – from text messaging and emails to AI-enabled chatbots.
Customer data from contact centres, combined with insights from other channels such as social media platforms and account engagement teams in B2B businesses, can give companies a much clearer view of customer service operations.
Contact centre innovation is pushing customer interaction to the next level.
Omnichannel communications. Contact centres are becoming more intelligent, letting customers reach you through chat, email, social media, text message, voice and web. Customers can switch between channels with ease and agents have a view of the whole conversation, across multiple channels, in one place.
There are many ways to use data to provide insights. Aggregate data can reveal trends that drive better marketing campaigns and product development. Demographic and geographic data can support decisions about where to open new branches or stores.
Data from recorded customer interactions can help personalise the experience for individual customers. Using data, you can communicate with customers through their preferred channel, offer them products and services that relate to their interests and market to them more effectively.
In a contact centre, data about the customer – their previous orders and communications with the business – can help agents to provide the best possible service.
Putting power into the hands of agents
Immediately connecting customers to someone who can help them is not just a technology challenge; it means having agents ready to help customers when they do get through.
Training employees to handle calls on specific issues will create more knowledgeable and engaged agents, who can then take the initiative to help customers as best they can. The result? Happier customers.
Contact centre agents will be in a better position to add more value when they have fewer routine tasks to do. Innovative self-service systems can take on some of this admin, freeing up time for agents to focus on more complex customer problems.
Biometric technology is already recognising customers’ voices, speeding up the authentication process and getting callers through to someone who can help them.
Technology can also transcribe and translate communications into customers’ native languages.
Uniting front and back office
Contact centres are the beating heart of business. The quality of interactions through the contact centre hub makes or breaks customer relationships.
Increasingly, contact centres are where enterprise systems combine, uniting customer-facing systems with back-office customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning and finance systems. Intelligent digital tech can draw maximum insight from this melting pot of data to drive better customer experience and grow the business.
