Calls are a high cost for most contact centres. Most have deployed an automated service in a bid to eliminate these costs and also place their agents in a position to deal with more high-level issues only.
Even though today's customers prefer the self-service option, automation must be done correctly in order to improve their experience and avoid having to call an organisation.
Ocular Technologies' partner company, Aspect, provides the following guidelines on how to achieve the above:
Integrate your mobile app with your contact centre
Leverage the assets you have. Adding contact centre integration does not require rebuilding your app. It just requires some re-factoring as well as a redesign that prequalifies the call where it belongs, thus bypassing the interactive voice response (IVR) completely and equipping the agent with everything they need to know before the first word is spoken. This helps reduce average handling time and increase first contact resolution.
Integrate your Web site with your contact centre
Add contact centre integration and turn your static phone number into an actionable button for help. As a next step, add collaboration and co-browsing to your Web site so your agents are enabled to help the customer in ways not possible before. "Let me show you what I mean" suddenly becomes a reality. As the final step, introduce video where it makes sense. Video can translate to trust, which is what you need in an e-commerce environment.
Offer callbacks vs wait times
Stop forcing customers to remain on the line. It costs you money and customers their time. Instead, tap into the contact centre queue for wait times, communicate those wait times on your Web site and mobile app (hide it behind an authentication wall if necessary), announce it in your IVR, and let your customers schedule or ask for immediate call backs. There are even ways to predict the best time for you to call your customer back - you still have a contact centre to manage after all.
Gracefully lead your customer from phone to mobile channels
There will still be those customers that pick up the phone and call you. So what can you do? Help them. Show them what's possible. Offer them a call back when they "zero out" of the IVR or get to the point of transfer. Better yet, suggest mobile self-service to customers to try while waiting for the call back. Customers won't lose their position in the queue, and chances are they might resolve their issue in your self-service application.
There are today many sophisticated technologies available to help enhance customer engagement while improving your costs. Behaviour from both parties needs to change however in order to embrace new customer service transition. In the end though, both customer and organisation will emerge happier, with a healthier bottom line.
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