I found great joy in reading one of our articles this week on a new study that highlighted the importance in businesses and brands delivering an agent experience to improve CX. Few good things have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the ability to be able to prove to employers we can all work from home (and be trusted in the process of delivering our work) is one of them. That’s why I devoured the news that a new study commissioned by CallMiner, the leading provider of speech and customer interaction analytics, has shared how contact centre leaders are prioritising the experiences of customer service representatives to improve customer engagement.
The study reads that 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.
After reading, I couldn’t help but wonder why this was news. Happy live agent = happy customer, the mathematical formula would be. But surely this is common sense. Live agents will have to wade through the waters of customers’ emotional traumas for some time to come, and its only right that they’re not working under traditional call centre practices that in 2021 now seem outdated.
CCaaS, CPaaS, omni-channel and automation technologies are the perfect X to aid the remote working agent and it’s exciting to see what the future will have in store for industries when nations ease all restrictions. The travel sector, for one, will be something to watch in the coming weeks. How will they cope with the surge in customer demand? Will they be agile enough to meet it at speed, and how will they manage in the comfort of their own homes?
The answer? Through workforce management solutions and personalisation offered up in top-of-the-range cloud contact centres of course.
The only irony of the situation is that through the power of advanced technologies did live agents acquire more humane working conditions (she says while the sunshine reflects off her laptop from her back garden).
