The highly contagious Omicron variant is causing widespread staff shortages across the UK and Europe. In contact centres, managers say they’re struggling to fill seats due to agents either being off sick with Covid or having to isolate, making it tricky to maintain service levels.
When struggling with this issue, digital channel management is often the silver bullet, allowing contact centres to strategically manage its contact volumes.
Discussing the approach, Stephen Yap, director of Jam!Research, says:
I’ve been consistently hearing from contact centre leaders over the past 30 days that they’re being impacted by high levels of staff sickness – putting pressure on their ability to provide high service levels to customers through voice alone. This is yet another reason why digital enablement, combined with human empathy, is becoming a key focus as contact centres evolve.
Yet, contact centres often get digital channel management wrong. For example, they sometimes force every customer down a digital route, which does not always complement CX.
Luckily, digital engagement solutions enable much more sophisticated channel management strategies. These often result in lower inbound demand and happier customers.
A Solution to Enhance Digital Channel Management
Puzzel offers a digital engagement solution that enables businesses to deliver more interactive and personalised customer experiences online. But it is also an effective channel management tool.
With this solution, contact centres can identify the intent of every person who visits the company website. Harnessing this information, they can then guide customers to the most efficient and cost-effective channel for their journey or enquiry based on their value to the business, agent availability, workload, and opening hours. In doing so, the contact centre maintains control over inbound demand, meeting service and sales targets – even when short-staffed.
Of course, many companies today offer the same level of assistance to all website visitors. However, this requires a large pool of agents and resources that many contact centres do not currently have. Instead, Puzzel’s solution helps operations to maximise digital channel management and engage live agents for only the most valuable interactions.
Puzzel’s Three-Step Approach to Better Digital Channel Management
1. Identify the Needs of Web Visitors in Real-Time
Almost 90% of customer journeys now begin online. But a common challenge for businesses today is getting to grips with the intent of website visitors. Are they browsing, looking for support, or ready to buy?
Puzzel’s digital engagement solution makes this possible by analysing visitor behaviour in real-time and identifying their intent. With this information, contact centres can make strategic resourcing decisions such as who to prioritise and how best to serve them.
2. Prioritise High-Value Customers
Many businesses today offer support on a first-come, first-serve basis. However, many companies have thousands of website visitors and limited resources due to Covid. As such, they cannot effectively assist vulnerable customers or engage those who are most valuable to your business.
Fortunately, Puzzel’s digital engagement solution enables companies to categorise each individual into a distinct group. Contact centres can then give particular groups priority service, according to their needs and value. While it may not feel “fair”, it is the most cost-effective solution.
Finally, operations can also categorise customers based on their individual customer history and value.
3. Automatically Offer the Best Solution for Each Customer
Once categorised, contact centres can then create “rules” and “triggers” that engage each type of web visitor with the right offer of support at the right time.
For example, operations may pass high-priority visitors to the most “expensive” channel for support, such as voice and live chat. Meanwhile, it is perhaps best to route visitors who are only looking for an address to the closest store through to a chatbot. Such a strategy ensures that the contact centre only utilises live agents for critical, high-value contacts.
Eager to walk out of the Covid-19 crisis with a more effective customer service strategy and better digital experience? Puzzel offers this digital engagement solution as a standalone tool and as part of its Puzzel Customer Service Platform.
