An independent study of contact centre agents commissioned by Cirrus, the leader in cloud contact centre solutions, reveals that having access to customer history across all channels is the number one requirement for contact centre agents.
A third of surveyed agents said customers hang up on them daily due to not having enough previous information at hand.
The survey was conducted to learn and understand how to prepare agents to deliver omnichannel strategies in the post-Covid world.
Commenting on the results, Cirrus’ CEO Jason Roos said:
“Customer service agents are among the heroes of the pandemic, but they are being let down by poor technology at this moment in time. The results tell us that they are struggling for access to information and being able to handle customer queries across multiple channels, which is impacting on customer experience.”
Only less than 10% of agents said they are able to service customer across five or more channels, whereas a third of agents has no training on email or video call etiquette. This leads to agents having to put on average 25 percent of all calls on hold while they search for more information.
Roos added: “The future of the contact centre is to develop ‘super agents’ empowered to service customers across all channels. We need to give them the tools and training to be able to do so, otherwise customer satisfaction will drop. “
The results are not too bright when it comes to the rate of solved enquiries at the first point of contact either. Only 23% of agents said they manage to resolve 90-100 percent of enquiries with no previous contact. Even though remote working has been set up ever since the lockdown began in the UK, just one 25% of agents find working from home as easy as working in the office.
Agents cite missing colleagues as the biggest impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. More than a third of agents say that it is difficult to motivate themselves while working alone.
“The research tells us that agents are crying out for a way to manage and resolve customer enquiries more efficiently. Fortunately, technology has answered the call. Solutions are available that are open source and can easily integrate with other systems, which enables agents to have immediate access to all relevant information that will help them to solve customer enquiries from single viewpoint”, said Roos.
