Organisations need to empower contact centre agents and inject structure, meaning and leadership into their engagement with customers.
So says Leon Stafford, territory manager at Interactive Intelligence, who notes the contact centre agent is at the heart of customer-facing activities, but is not always equipped to deliver a good customer experience.
According to Interactive Intelligence Customer Service Experience 2014 research, the main annoyance reported by consumers involved the agent. The most noted examples were not being able to understand the agent when speaking on the phone, and having an agent who was condescending or demanding.
The research revealed when contacting businesses or service providers regularly, more consumers find agents who have access to their previous service interactions to be extremely valuable.
Stafford believes the contact centre is no longer about calls, but about relationships. "Today's customer has the power to go online and learn, rate and review on multiple channels," says Stafford.
He points out, when designing a perfect customer engagement model, organisations must be aware of the tools needed by their agents. Having too much multichannel presence can create noise, and dilute the company's messaging and services, he says.
To retain customer value and margin, a business needs to differentiate itself by choosing channels that can make its customers' lives better, adds Stafford.
According to Stafford, the best technologies deployed in contact centres in recent years have just been carelessly put together, resulting in agents being confronted by more screens.
Contact centre agents spend most of their time trying to understand and moving between multiple screens rather than actually adding value to the interaction, says Stafford. "We generally find agents want to do a good job, but they have to 'paddle hard under the surface' just to do a slightly better-than-average job."
The most valuable service to offer customers in 2014 is an easy way to provide feedback on interactions once the customer completes their interaction, says Interactive Intelligence.
With the right tools in place, the contact centre agents no longer need to make many manual adjustments, says Stafford. They can focus more on delivering good service, really listening to what the customer says and going the extra mile, he adds.
Stafford points out many companies have been slow to move to Web-optimised, advanced tool sets and cloud-based services. For legacy contact centres to embrace new models, a new mindset, leadership and a "blank page" are needed, he concludes.
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