Johannesburg, 02 Nov 2021
The contact centre has never been more important. In 2020, 76% of customers opted to make a call rather than use e-mail (20%) or an interactive chat (14%) function when resolving a problem. This surge in contact centre usage was largely driven by the pandemic, but it hasn’t been a seamless process. Remote working complexity inevitably led to long delays and increased customer frustration. Thirty minutes on hold, only to be cut off as an agent answers the phone was, and still is, a standard occurrence. It is not, however, one that will keep customers coming back for more. The contact centre plays a critical role, now more than ever, in ensuring that an organisation meets increasingly sophisticated customer needs.
Poor service and support don’t do the business any favours in a competitive market. Everybody has been on that call where they’ve been transferred from one department to another, and where wait times can run into hours. This scenario is the most likely to drive customers away from the business because nobody has the time or inclination to deal with convoluted contact centre complexities or poor service. Customers don’t want to feel that they’ve hit a wall when it comes to resolving a problem, so they vote with their feet.
Customer service and customer experiences (CX) have become commodities. The Microsoft Global State of Customer Service report unpacked the evolving customer landscape and how this has been fundamentally changed by the global pandemic. It found that service, unsurprisingly, remains a priority for most customers, with 55% expecting the service they receive from a company to improve year-on-year. They want consistent and exceptional service, and 90% will use this as a benchmark when making a purchasing decision, while 58% will end a business relationship without hesitation if service is lacking.
Companies that differentiate on the foundations of service and CX will see measurable return on investment, with a revenue increase of up to 8% more than competitors if they do it right.
The reality is that customers are increasingly sophisticated and demanding – digitally empowered and spoiled for choice, many haven’t been thrilled by customer service over the past 18 months. From handling calls in the bath, to poor reception, to limited visibility into customer accounts, many contact centres have struggled to balance the complexities of remote support alongside a significant increase in customer demand. However, the work from home contact centre model is unlikely to change any time soon – work from home is expected to stay in play for the foreseeable future, if not forever, with only 4% of contact centre managers anticipating a full return to the office.
All of this simply clarifies the need to resolve the immediacy of a customer’s demand against the limitations of a dispersed contact centre workforce. On one hand, contact centre employees have had to deal with the rapid and unexpected move from traditional on-premises contact centres, and have had to deal with limited access to information and the tools to do their jobs. On the other hand, customers are fed up. They want shorter call waiting times, faster problem resolution and less frustration. The challenge is that most customer platforms are old and outdated, and they don’t have the right functionality for the modern world. They are often capex intensive with reduced functionality and scale. This is where cloud solutions can really transform CX and contact centre efficiencies.
According to IBM, 71% of companies believe that cloud is key to transforming customer experiences and to translating legacy technology complexities into innovative new ways of doing business. With a well-designed and intelligently curated cloud-based contact centre, companies can pull CX right out of the quagmire of complexity and straight into fast and efficient connectivity. Cloud can scale on demand, is agile enough to adapt to changing customer demands, and empowers agents and customers – especially if delivered as a service.
Companies want to do better by their customers – they know that CX is a differentiator and that it can drive growth, but they are constrained by legacy systems that can’t flex in line with the changes wrought by the new normal. The right contact centre platform puts the entire omnichannel into one platform and combines this with self-service, unified communications, clear workforce management and optimisation tools. Every part of the centre can be designed to streamline CX by giving agents and companies the tools they need to do more and go further.
The Hosted Contact Centre (HCC) solution from BCX blends best-of-breed technology to achieve measurable results. This cloud-based platform delivers proven increases in customer service, digital sales and workforce engagement management, and it leverages proven intelligent technologies to seamlessly connect people to the right pathways and to solve their problems. BCX has taken the platform a step further by combining these capabilities with market-leading connectivity services to create a cloud contact centre solution that ticks every business box from one end – your employees – to the next, your customers.
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