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The Contact Center of the Future
by Mariann McDonagh, Chief Marketing Officer, inContact
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It’s no secret that advances in technology and changing workforce demographics are two main avenues in our rapidly evolving economy. Examples of technology’s impact are everywhere, from the Facebook IPO to the World Economic Forum’s January report on big data analytics as a new class of economic asset, just like currency or gold. Human resources analysts, meanwhile, are constantly trying to make sense of employment dynamics, including the trend toward a younger workforce and the advent of the virtual office.
But if technology and workforce issues are key factors in our economic future, how do we best match these and related factors in an efficient and profitable way? Nowhere are the challenges and benefits of getting this mix right so great as in the field of customer service. That’s because the alchemy is all happening under the watchful eye of consumers: They demand information and responsiveness of a scale and variety only made possible by sophisticated technological infrastructure and multiple social media platforms. But they insist it all happen in a way that still feels individualized and “human” to them.
Industry strategists agree the epicenter for this balancing act is the customer contact center, where “all things to all people” is not just an aspirational slogan, it’s a daily performance requirement! So what does the contact center of the future look like?
The obvious place to start is to examine customer needs and make sure the contact center is agile.enough to meet them. Figures from the American Express 2011 Global Customer Service Barometer show U.S. consumers prefer to resolve their concerns through a variety of touchpoints, including the telephone (90 percent), face to face interaction (75 percent), email or through a company website (67 percent), online chat (47 percent), text messaging (22 percent) and social networking sites (22 percent). The first priority for executives trying to parse these figures is to determine the ideal mix between assisted and self-service options that can satisfy these modes of communication. The next step is to develop the process and technology changes to make it all happen.
Again, the key is agility. Cloud-based contact center services, for example, can be adjusted in real time to meet rising or falling call volume and support new marketing or sales campaigns. The result: quick, knowledgeable reactions to changing customer demands, whether they be in response to a product issue that goes viral in social media or in support of unexpected demand for a new service. Other examples include next generation self-service technologies capable of learning and improving on recommended solutions to customer issues.
Related technologies can and should also be deployed outside the company switchboard to track customer sentiments directed elsewhere. A 2011 survey by Spherion Staffing Services showed that – among respondents with good customer support experiences – 17 percent shared their opinions via social media and 15 percent posted online reviews. In a troubling but not surprising counterpoint, a full quarter of those with poor experiences chose to vent their frustration in social media channels.
As a result, tomorrow’s customer service technology infrastructure must enable analysis both within and outside the company, effectively managing and collating streams of customer data from different channels; to gain competitive advantage, these analytics tools need to quickly decipher and act on customer sentiment and flag emerging trends. This can help more companies meet the high bar for consistent service across multiple channels set by Amazon, Apple and other well-funded competitors just a click away. To keep up with expectations, the best customer contact centers give agents tools like visual customer profiles that combine all known information about a customer. Additional tools include automated pop-ups that use real time voice or text analytics from customers as a basis to recommend the next best action.
Data analytics can indeed do a remarkable job of sifting huge amounts of information and can even push the bounds into what used to be the uniquely human task of judging customer sentiments and behaviors. Some banks, for instance, have applied algorithms to datasets for millions of mortgage defaults to help distinguish the difference between who can pay and who will pay when considering foreclosure proceedings.
But decision-makers should also understand that the contact center of the future can’t lean solely on technological wizardry. In parsing transactional, behavioral, attitudinal and other vital customer information, the contact center of the future must also rely on skilled agents who can combine this information with company priorities and their own interpersonal skills to engage in knowledgeable, relevant and reassuring customer interactions. Cultivating this workforce into the future means coming to terms with two basic realities: Your workers will be younger, and they will increasingly be employed offsite as remote agents.
Contact centers are already full of Gen Y employees, and this trend will spike over the next five years. Surveys show these employees are generally optimistic, collaborative, socially engaged and willing to trust and respect leaders they deem competent and ethical. But these positive attributes come with some expectations on their part for up-to-date technologies, schedule flexibility and creative license when solving problems and dealing with customers.
Virtual contact centers can help attract these workers and meet some of their conditions for signing on. Commuting to a massive cubicle farm is a nonstarter for many, especially when virtualization technologies render such a cattle call pointless. In a classic win-win, virtualization solutions also save money. Support.com, for example, is an inContact client that saved an estimated $3.4 million in annual productivity by setting up its more than 500 personal technology experts to work at home.
By now it should be clear that robust customer analytics and a strong corps of agents are prerequisites for the call center of the future. But companies that want true efficiency and profitability must connect the dots between the two. Agents with good verbal skills should obviously be assigned to telephone duties whenever possible, just as good writers should be deployed in chat rooms and social networks. But the matchmaking can get more nuanced than that: Agents who are adept at multitasking between different media, for instance, can be assigned to support “Millennials” – customers born between 1980 and 1995 – who expect no less. Analytics tools can help filter purchasing history, geography, demographics, recent behaviors and other factors to match customers with the right agents.
While it is impossible to precisely predict the industry’s future, it’s not hard to see the key threads that help shape it. Technology, workforce issues and customer expectations are all part of the tapestry that make up the contact center of the future. And the smart companies should start weaving today.
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