The current global pandemic is unleashing dramatic changes in workforces across various industries, and contact centers are no different.Gartner reports that, before the outbreak, nearly 68% of customer support and service companies functioned from traditional call centers, while less than 10% worked from home.
Well, not anymore! Going forward, it’s predicted that 71% of contact centers will be remote.
As contact center managers and representatives transition to this new norm of remote working, they are also faced with significant surges in call volumes. Nevertheless, contact centers are adjusting with the help of refined processes and advanced technologies such as virtual phone system.
With working from home becoming a part of the business for the foreseeable future, what can you do to streamline your contact center to better manage the changing workplace dynamics during Covid? Read on!
Transitioning to the New Norm
Contact centers are experiencing massive transitions. This is applicable when managing and employing work-from-home representatives, efficiently handling resources and fluctuating call volumes. According to Customer Contact Week Digital, approximately 90% of global organizations still use on-premises solutions as the primary means of customer engagement to facilitate their contact centers. This will leave them unequipped to manage the exponential increase in remote work and digitization that the pandemic has brought.
As call volumes increase, customer anxiety and representative stress also rise. And soon enough, what was managed easily before Covid can now feel extraordinarily overwhelming. Hence, it is essential to equip your contact center with the necessities to overcome the challenges of today's unprecedented times. With the right strategies, you can not only survive but gain the momentum to thrive on a long-term basis.
Here are a few strategies to streamline your contact center during the pandemic and after the crisis ends:
Focus on Customer Experience
The most effective strategy for any contact center to emerge successful under such crippling circumstances is by focusing on customer experience without any compromises. Businesses that create exceptional experiences for their customers can set themselves apart from their competition, even during a global pandemic.
The crisis can be a potential opportunity for you to build and develop your customer interactions and generate unwavering loyalty. Hence, customer experience has never been more critical. Get started by prioritizing these four tips:
- Address and eliminate lengthy hold times on your virtual phone system.
- Avoid asking customers for their information repeatedly.
- Optimize the customers’ journey throughout your organization
- Monitor representative calls to avoid future errors.
Upgrade your Technology
Your most significant barrier to business continuity will be outdated contact center software and technologies that only work well with on-premise infrastructure. However, today's advanced technologies can be easily deployed to support your contact center. They can be implemented to bring long-term benefits for your center even after the Covid pandemic has passed. Manage rapidly increasing customer demands with ease and reduced organizational capacity with these multi-functional technologies:
Cloud Technology
A cloud contact center solution is guaranteed to improve customer experience. In these unprecedented times, this handy technology will future-proof your contact center by elevating customer experience under any given condition.
Despite the slow adoption of the cloud by global contact centers, this pandemic has shown the need for the same to adapt in this ever-changing world. With the cloud, contact centers can scale without fear and maintain business continuity irrespective of where representatives choose to work from. It ensures productivity, customer satisfaction, and the long-term survival of your contact center.
Chat Bots
Bot technology can have a significant impact on your operations. As a short-term initiative, they are effective in collecting essential customer information through general queries. Today, customers are willing to find answers to their queries all by themselves. Gartner predicts that a billion service tickets will be raised through automated and customer-owned bots alone by 2030.
Chatbots can help contact centers with limited human resources focus on complex situations and queries that demand manual intervention. Ensure that multiple simple questions can be handled by your bot with an escalation route leading to a representative interaction via a one-to-one chat or call when required.
Callback Features
Long queues can lead to an increase in escalations. Unplanned events, like the pandemic, can bring about an unexpected surge in call volumes, thereby, causing significant queue times. With a feature like callback on your virtual phone system, you can efficiently handle large call volumes while retaining customer trust.
Workforce Optimization
Utilizing Workforce Optimization (WFO) software in your contact center will help you schedule, train, monitor, evaluate, reward, and engage your representatives. Your contact center's success is dependent on the quality of your representatives and the proper management of labor expenses. Hence, the goal of WFO is to enhance the quality, efficiency, and productivity of your representatives.
WFO in a contact center is often supported by a software tool collection that can automate several components of the optimization process, which includes:
Workforce Management (WFM)
This supports your contact center's scheduling and forecasting functions as they are vital for managing labor expenses and delivering an excellent customer experience.
Quality Monitoring (QM)
These software tools record representative calls and interactions via several digital channels other than your virtual phone system. They offer a mechanism through which you can conduct and store assessments based on their interactions. These tools can also integrate unified representative training tools and advanced analytics to increase overall efficiency. Through self-evaluations and accessible reporting, these tools are a catalyst for representative engagement.
Performance Management Systems
Through real-time and multi-functional dashboards, these systems can help you train, develop, and engage representatives while offering you instant visibility of their performance against reliable key performance indicators.
Recording
Call recording is an essential part of WFO because quality management in a virtual setup is practically impossible without the same. Through call and screen recording integrations in your virtual phone system, you can gain incredible insight into the interactions of your representatives, and thereby, amplify representative training that involves more than just the conversation.
Unified Omnichannel Service
In today’s digital world, omnichannel is an obvious requirement when it comes to streamlining your contact center. With the rise of in-hand mobile devices, social media, and endless choices for customers, meeting your customers where they are can help win you their loyalty, and this has been a priority for businesses for a long time.
With each service channel, you are offering accessibility and enhanced convenience to your customers. However, they’ll expect all your channels to reflect efficiency and the best of service.
Customers tend to face different experiences on different channels when the system is riddled with unintegrated applications and unreliable data sources. This inconsistency can lead to negative customer experience over time. Hence, ensure that your websites, mobile applications, emails, chats, texts, and representative desktops operate as one unified system for an omnichannel contact center.
Ready, steady…
Every business is different, and so is every contact center. In this ever-changing world, do not lose focus on time-tested contact center strategies amid the ongoing chaos. Nevertheless, with unique environments and challenges around the corner, you must be quick in deploying changes through fresh approaches and advanced technology to your standard procedures when required.
For example, a virtual phone system can help handle and manage the surge in call volumes during Covid, or the move to cloud contact center solutions could bring you the mobility and accessibility that you’ve never experienced before.
Embrace the new and upgrade the old! As you and your representatives ease into this new normal with work from home practices, you will soon find ways to increase productivity and efficiency.
In no time, you can pave a clear path for your contact center through this pandemic with the ability to manage anything that comes your way.
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