Johannesburg, 11 Apr 2018
Influenced by powerful market trends such as changing customer engagement preferences, digitisation, channel fragmentation and, most notably, the rise of the experience economy, the legacy contact centre model is facing obsolescence, says Prince Mashayahanya, Product Manager Pivotal Data.
To remain relevant and contribute meaningfully to the prosperity and profitability of the modern enterprise, the contact centre must evolve into a platform that facilitates meaningful first-line customer engagement via multiple traditional and new digital channels.
Central to this transformation are overhauls of the contact centre's technological and operational capabilities. However, in a marketplace characterised by the commoditisation of products, services and communication channels, it is ultimately the delivery of superior customer experience (CX) that will differentiate a business from its competitors and deliver a strategic advantage.
Memorable and consistent CX
Delivering memorable and consistent CX has therefore become a strategic imperative for any business (and its contact centre) that wishes to not only survive, but thrive in the new digitally enabled economy. Increasingly business leaders are realising this fact, with Forrester research indicating that 86% of companies surveyed already aspire to be leaders in CX.
To achieve this objective, contact centre leaders across industries understand the importance of advancing CX maturity, with Gartner predicting that this year more than 50% of organisations will redirect investments to CX innovations.
However, contact centres find themselves at different points on the CX maturity curve. While some are only beginning to explore how to improve CX, others have already begun to implement strategies aimed at improving customer engagement and experience.
CX-centric strategic roadmap
Whatever level they find themselves, in the absence of a CX-centric strategic roadmap, few will craft the type of CX that differentiates a brand from its competitors. To truly excel, the contact centre needs to advance to a higher level of maturity by developing formalised processes and implementing the appropriate systems to deliver superior CX to customers.
Discover 10 Steps to CX Maturity in the Contact Centre with this eBook
The point of departure for every modern contact centre is to first develop a strategic maturity model, which will provide an actionable framework to better understand and benchmark the current state of its CX capabilities. This model will then guide the on-going maturation of a contact centre's operations, processes and technology, by identifying both the strategic direction and the tools needed to continually improve customer engagement and their experiences with the brand.
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