A new study commissioned by CallMiner, the leading provider of speech and customer interaction analytics, dives into how contact centre leaders are prioritising the experiences of customer service representatives to improve customer experience.
Global-scale remote work, a surge in digital interactions, and increased automation have led to brands seeing the phone as the new empathy channel. To equip CSRs for the emotionally driven customer interactions, organisations will have to collect data on customer journeys and interactions, and consider new tools to aid supervisors and agents.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents have increased their focus on improving the CSR experience. Adopting AI and automation technologies could empower CSRs to become the ‘empathy agents’ that customers need.
The study also found that ‘CX is the north star for CSR improvement efforts’. 70% of respondents agree that a good customer-agent experience diminishes a bad brand experience. 68% of respondents said that the phone has become the new empathy channel for customers. Consequently, things became busier for CSRs, as 67% of inquiries are complex requests, while 70% of customers are more emotionally charged than ever before.
Organisational disconnect has been a hurdle for meeting market opportunities. 57% of respondents admit it’s a challenge for CSRs to anticipate customer needs, while 56% say it’s difficult to consider and interpret a customer’s dynamic emotional state.
Jeff Gallino, CTO at CallMiner, said:
“The pandemic upended the standard ideas of customer service. To meet these shifting demands, organizations have had to accelerate digitalization, automation and AI strategies.
“To effectively arm CSRs for every customer conversation, including the emotionally driven ones, brands must prioritize analyzing every interaction. Being able to interpret emotion and identify patterns from customer interactions at scale enables organizations to more effectively support CSRs and use those insights to drive improved enterprise-wide decisions”, added Gallino.
When it comes to empowering CSRs and leaders with the right insights, 67% of decision-makers say their organisations will continue with some form of remote or hybrid contact centre. Future-proofing contact centres has been one of the priorities in empowering CSRs and their supervisors to address customer needs. Additionally, 56% of respondents said future-proofing would lead to improved insights that could support enterprise decision-making.
