Customer Experience

High-quality professional customer support is crucial to building lasting customer relationships. Contact centres represent the voice of many organisations, existing as the first point of contact for customers engaging with your organisation.

IVR’s…love them or hate them, they are an almost ubiquitous part of the contact centre industry and have been around for a very long time. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the first commercial IVR system was built to perform order entry and inventory control back in 1973, although the technology was certainly in its infancy, and considered expensive and difficult to implement.

Since the beginning of 2020 and the inception of COVID-19, contact centers have had to make adjustments as to the way we work and employees' daily lives. This shift in the workplace proved to be specifically challenging for contact centers and help desks. Agents were used to being in an office and not working virtually. The change to in-person and effectively assisting customers had to take place quickly and efficiently. On any given day, agents might experience more extended workdays due to higher call volume, handling of complicated subjects, and customer complaints, and aggravation.

Turnover is a major concern in many contact centres. Between the monotonous daily routine and the work environment, many agents experience exhaustion and may choose to look elsewhere for work. However, if you can trial new and different ways to coach and motivate agents so that they enjoy their work more, then they are more likely to stay with the organisation.

Contact centres are always looking for new ways to ensure employee engagement and productivity, especially now that many agents work, at least some of the time, from home. For remote agents especially, it can be more difficult to plug into the culture of the office and stay engaged with the brand without the face to face interaction they would usually have in the contact centre.

Contact centre changes are never an easy venture, but it's crucial to embrace an opportunity for change. While the world is slowly returning to normal after a global pandemic, now is the time to identify how your contact centre can be improved.

Customer service and customer experience may sound like they encompass the same ideas, but there are also crucial differences. This article explains.