Stuck in the past?
Until recently, the traditional contact centre effectively acted as a switch for customer enquiries. This model is retained today by many companies but gradually we are beginning to see a shift happening as more and more organisations appreciate the dangers of being perceived to be stuck in the past by their customers.
The role of the contact centre moving forward is beginning to change. Organisations are starting to bolster the front-end layer which allows smart streaming and triaging of customer queries at the interaction stage, based not just on the nature of the query but on information intelligently gleaned about the customer’s value to the business.
The ultimate aim is to create a frictionless interaction, making it as easy as possible for the customer to get what they need from the engagement process.
Things to consider when creating your contact centre strategy:
- How many users do you have now and how many are they likely to have in three years’ time?
- How complex and sophisticated are the enquiries you’ll receive likely to be?
- How geographically dispersed are you? Are you just operating in the UK? Or do you have international operations?
- Do you generally have large seasonal peaks and troughs in demand
- What regulations do you have to comply with?
- How strong is your internal IT department?
- Do you need people to be able to access their system remotely from home?
- Do you utilise knowledge-workers and do you require skills-based routing?
- How much more could your customers achieve through a self-service approach backed up by the right tools?
