A fascinating new report published by Puzzel has revealed the increase in businesses opting for hybrid working models has shone a light on the importance of employee experience (EX).
The report, called The Evolution of the Contact Centre, shared five trends for the CX industry as it moved into the second half of an extraordinary year.
The lockdowns of 2020-21 were a crash course in how to effectively migrate contact centre operations to remote working, the report states, adding that as restrictions eased and offices reopened, it was apparent for many contact centres there would be no return to the fully office-based model of pre-pandemic days.
It emphasised the lack of clarity over remote working and whether it will continue or be scrapped by firms has been a cause of major anxiety for many live agents working from home.
It also highlights the importance of remote working from a scheduling point of view, in giving workers the opportunity to fill certain shifts that would otherwise be a challenge to should employers request staff must be in the office to take on the shift. This in turn could lead to staff shortages.
Jonathan Allen, Chief Marketing Officer, Puzzel, said: “Advisor experience and customer experience go hand in hand. Creating a seamless, frictionless and satisfying customer journey should be your touchstone when looking for ways to improve your contact centre and customer service.
“This comes down to equipping your people with access to expert knowledge, integrating cross-channel data, providing powerful AI (artificial intelligence) tools, and giving agents an easy-to-use interface. With this in mind, Puzzel has partnered with the CCMA to investigate how and why the contact centre has become elevated and why advisor experience should be a top priority in every organisation that has a contact centre.”
The report also analysed the next technology frontier, which are systems that empower frontline colleagues post-pandemic. Predictive contact analytics and intelligent call routing are beginning to make their presence felt. Real-time speech and text analytics can mine both the content and the tonality of a conversation to help prompt advisors with useful suggestions, the report added.
And of course, linking customer transaction and contact history to inbound telephony systems is also used in call routing and to equip the advisor with information that avoids the need for the customer to repeat themselves.
Other trends identified in the report include:
- The shift to hybrid working has placed the spotlight on flexibility and welfare as well as productivity
- A new appreciation of the value of the front line, burnished during the pandemic, is helping contact centres forge closer connections to other parts of organisations
- As demand for simpler queries migrates to self-serve channels, human advisors take on more complex interactions with increasing pay scales and recognition to match
- Growing appreciation of the contact centre as a place to build a career, nurturing valuable expertise and acting as a gateway to roles elsewhere in the organisation
- Technology that empowers advisors, such as connectivity between the telephony platform and CRM databases, intelligent call routing and analytics and customer-feedback systems that incorporate advisor feedback and insights
