The contact centre as we know it is evolving, now more than ever. Frustrating self-service interactions and exhausting waiting times are becoming a thing of the past. Today’s consumers expect better, and if they can’t get the right experience from you, they’ll go elsewhere.
This is a trend that’s becoming increasingly obvious in 2020. Now that consumers can’t necessarily interact with brands face-to-face, they expect the digital connections they have to be better than ever. The contact centre is officially going to be the most essential part of the brand/consumer interaction going forward, and no business can afford to cut corners.
To learn more about how the contact centre is changing, I spoke with the Director of Strategic Communications for Contact Center Solutions at Cisco, Zack Taylor. Here’s what he had to say.
How Has the Contact Centre and CX Changed?
Zack told me that the contact centre is going through a major shift, driven by a range of factors. He noted that shopping malls are now almost empty, and most organisations are emphasizing digital vs. face-to-face interactions.
The massive shift to working from home has made a difference to the way that we operate in contact centres too, agents are evolving in this new remote landscape. On top of that, Zack believes that the contact centre is even more of a crucial component in today’s business landscape. It’s the place where customers go when they can’t solve their own problem with self-service solutions.
“This year, we saw a rapid acceleration towards the contact centre that we were eventually going to get anyway – one that’s digital and connected. From a customer experience perspective, expectations have changed drastically. Customers expect an unparalleled quality of service from every company.”
Your clients aren’t just comparing experiences that they have with your brand with interactions they had in the past. They’re comparing you to category leaders in any industry – the likes of Tesla, Apple, and other CX leaders.
The result is countless businesses jumping into action. “Companies are taking the contact centre more seriously. It’s the last thing between your business and a lost opportunity. In a world where customers want more, companies are delivering easier, more optimized experiences.”
What is the Hype Cycle and Super-Agents?
In a recent blog post, Zack Taylor described the impending arrival of the “hype cycle” and “super-agents”. I asked him to explain those concepts a little further.
He told me that in the past, most companies were obsessed with the idea of reducing costs in the contact centre and cutting expenses wherever possible. For example, businesses would move agents to overseas locations to reduce costs – but this wouldn’t improve service. Now, we’re seeing that customer experience is the only sustainable differentiator. Companies need to deliver excellent experiences to create hype.
The “super-agent,” according to Cisco, is the idea that we can use technology and innovations to move every agent in the contact centre up a notch, “so the rest of them, become like the best of them.” Part of this process involves automating things that would otherwise take up valuable employee time that could be used to focus on the customer, and giving agents support from more advanced features.
“We can improve efficiency by automating note-taking and other repetitive tasks and get rid of the need to waste time searching for information. He noted that a typical contact centre agent spends upward of 20% of their time searching for information. Virtual agents can help answer questions for a human agent automatically, which means they reduce the time they spend on the phone, but still offer customers a better level of service. It’s not an either/or equation anymore, you can have better efficiency and better results.”
How Will the Agent Continue to Evolve?
I asked Zack how he believes the role of the agent is going to continue evolving going forward. First, he noted that where the agents are located has dramatically changed. Most of the agents that today’s contact centres have are at home, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll return to the office. The role that these agents are playing in the workspace is different too.
He told me that going forward, the contact centre agent is going to be a crucial ambassador for the business. The customers that come into the contact centre in the years to come are going to be the people who can’t solve problems on their own. They’re going to be the exceptions and outliers for situations that can’t be automated.
“Contact centre agents are going to need higher emotional equity going forward. They’ll need to be more informed, more skilled, and more capable of solving problems. Your agents will need to use more positive language and be less scripted too”
Zack noted that the contact centre agents of tomorrow will need to be more conversational – similar to the bots and IVRs of the future. They’ll have fewer scripts, and more genuine conversations where they can connect to customers on a deeper level. This human creativity will be able to shine through because we won’t be as focused on time-based metrics as we are today.
“We’ll be less concentrated on things like how much time an agent spends on a call, and more interested in whether the problem is resolved first-time around.”
Where’s the Opportunity for Cisco Customers Right Now?
Zack told me that there’s a lot of opportunity ahead for the contact centre, as the super-agent and the hype cycle become more critical. Cisco is investing in various cloud capabilities to help companies in driving newer, better customer experiences, where everyone has a better conversation.
“We’re going through a contact centre renaissance right now, and it’s a very exciting time. Every executive in the world right now is focusing on experience as their only true long-term differentiator. In the past, the contact centre focused heavily on cost and time. Now, the real focus is customer experience.”
The experience revolution, according to Zack, and the lack of a brick-and-mortar option or customer interactions is changing the nature of the contact centre. Customers want more, and the contact centre can deliver it with new technology and opportunities. “The things we’ve been musing about for years are actually happening. The future has arrived, and we’re already there.”
