Contact centers have long been on the front lines of customer service, but today, they’re witnessing a seismic shift in customer expectations. These growing expectations are rapidly upping the ante for brands to deliver superior customer experience (CX).
The reality is that customer expectations are evolving across sectors. Tech-enabled personalization means today’s customers are accustomed to easily accessing information and they expect seamless communication.
Think of your own experiences as a customer. Receiving up-to-the-minute shipping updates directly in your email inbox, or being served custom-curated purchase suggestions on social media, are commonplace.
Even if you’re not in the tech business, tech-enabled CX has become a baseline for today’s consumers. Your teams must modernize and continually improve to ensure customer satisfaction.
Improving CX is Tough
Businesses know CX advancement is a priority, but they’re failing to live up to expectations. For an unprecedented third year in a row, U.S. consumer perceptions of CX quality are down, according to Forrester. Steep declines were recorded in three dimensions of quality: effectiveness, ease, and emotion.
It can feel impossible to focus on improving CX when your team is buried in call volume and struggling to keep staff, but conditions show no signs of slowing. Recent studies show 57% of customer care leaders expect call volumes to increase and the same group said they’re still experiencing high staff turnover.
…your bot’s responses are only as good as the knowledge base that feeds it.
Expectations will continue to grow, and industry challenges won’t disappear overnight. The contact centers that find the right balance of human support and tech-enabled automation stand the best chance of delivering quality experiences that are effective, easy, and connect emotionally.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, when implemented strategically, can empower customers with self-service and enable human agents to do their best work. We will see how in the following sections.
Empowering Customers with Self-Service
Contact center pros know self-service is a win for everyone. Faster service. Fewer tickets. Improved CSAT scores. But just because your organization provides customers with self-service tools doesn’t mean they are having good experiences with them.
For most organizations, AI-powered chatbots are a first line of self-service. Your current chatbot is likely improving your first contact resolution (FCR) rates and cutting down on tickets, but too often we’re seeing teams adopt a “set it and forget it” mentality with their chatbots.
If your chatbot is really dialed-in, it should deflect 80%-90% of tickets. But if you’re in the 40%-60% range, chances are your customers aren’t having a great self-service experience.
Chatbots need ongoing care, and they should learn from user feedback and your knowledge base as they are used. Whether it is chat or email, your bot’s responses are only as good as the knowledge base that feeds it.
Investing time and resources to improve your chatbot and refine your knowledge base will go a long way to improving CX today. But looking ahead, your self-service tools need to go beyond traditional channels and offer an omnichannel experience.
Today’s consumers are constantly switching between channels and CX needs to mirror their habits. Contact center leaders need to continually push for a unified CX that seamlessly moves customers from channel to channel.
They [agents] need time to do their best work with the tools to help them succeed.
Think about this familiar example: your chatbot escalates a complex issue, but all agents are busy. Rather than asking a customer to wait on chat, an integrated system offers the opportunity to switch the conversation to a text message thread, then respond when an agent is available.
Offering this modern day convenience, then, makes it easy for customers and creates an experience where they feel their time is respected. Every experience should offer immediate value and convenience to customers across channels.
Helping Agents Do Their Best Work
Continually investing in the self-service experience is important to improving CSAT scores, but enabling agents is also critical.
To improve CX, customers need to feel emotionally connected. Self-service can go a long way toward advancing quality through ease and effectiveness, but your agents are your greatest asset for emotional connection.
For agents to deliver quality CX, the agent experience is critically important. They need time to do their best work with the tools that will help them succeed.
Dialing-in self-service tools can relieve some of the pressure on your support team by deflecting more Level-0 tickets. This frees up agents for their best and highest purpose: solving complex problems. Here’s how to make that happen.
First, to be successful, agents need access to essential customer information. To reduce average handle time (AHT) and live up to customer expectations that they be informed, agents must be able to see a total picture of customer interactions with a CRM that tracks touchpoints across channels, including self-service. Agents can’t succeed if they’re flying blind.
Second, when issues happen, agents must be able to respond and resolve in real time. AI-powered agent assistance tools can suggest responses for agents, helping them be well-informed and consistent.
Lastly, empower agents with autopilot tools that help them manage the onslaught of messages. No one wants to answer the same questions all day long and Generative AI can help them streamline their work.
Tools like these will improve your key metrics, but perhaps more importantly, enhance working conditions for your team. When agents are happy and productive, they can be emotionally present and focus on delivering superior CX.
Finding Balance
Tech enablements for contact centers are tremendously exciting, but adoption is not the end of the road. Organizations must continually assess their tools and nurture their human agents in order to deliver CX that will live up to growing customer expectations.
Organizations will find future CX success at the intersection of human support and tech-enabled AI and automation.
