Contact Center And Customer Experience Trends To Watch Out For

As of mid March, approximately 90 percent of global organizations were using an on-site solution for their contact centers, leaving them ill-equipped to manage the rapid scaling and remote work requirements necessitated by the spread of the coronavirus. I’ll let you draw your own conclusion on why that’s extremely problematic for modern (digital) customer experience – how it’s affecting you, businesses of all sizes, B2C communication, and the global economy at scale. 

Simply put, we can’t adapt if we don’t have the right technology, tools, and knowledge.

An overview of our latest market study

To collect data for our latest CCW Digital Market Study: New Standards For Customer Contact Performance, published earlier this week, we conducted a number of surveys that attracted global respondents responsible for overall leadership, contact center, customer experience, marketing, operations, sales, human resources, information technology and product development in their respective organizations. 

Read More: Market Study: New Standards For Customer Contact Performance

Example respondent titles included director of product, head of customer experience, director of member experience, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, vice president of operations, manager of client support, quality assurance lead, digital manager, vice president of customer support, engagement leader and vice president of patient services.

When it comes to the most urgent challenges in today’s contact center and customer experience, none affects more contact centers than convoluted systems (or a strictly on-site one). For example, thirty-eight percent (38%) of companies say their agents struggle due to the lack of an integrated desktop. 

Other top challenges include agents not receiving enough context about customers (33%), insufficient use of automation (33%), the absence of a 360-degree view (32%), and many more.

While there are a number of critical areas of improvement and solutions addressed in the market study (that every aspiring customer-centric organization should be aware of), I want to focus on a few of the positives our analysts found, to shed light on the adaptation many successful contact centers and CX-centric businesses are witnessing first-hand, not merely to survive, but transform the future of B2C communication. 

The goal is not to survive the financial Darwinism of COVID-19 that many of us are experiencing, but to move swiftly through digital transformation for the sake of successful business continuity after the financial Darwinism of COVID-19. 

Read More: Special Report Series: Field Service Management (Sponsored by Salesforce)

One of the study’s many questions asked respondents:

Which of the following are meaningfully impacting your customer contact performance (including, but not limited to, your situation amid the Coronavirus pandemic)?

Increased use of collaboration tools (Teams, Slack, etc) – 65.79%

Increased emphasis on digital channels – 52.63%

Outsourcing partners don’t meet performance standards – 7.89%

Collaboration to synergy (1 + 1 = 3)

Qualtrics recently provided our analysts with a study published earlier this month that is worth highlighting. The report is titled The Other COVID-19 Crisis: Mental Health, as it discusses the effects the pandemic is having on employees’ psychological motivation, productivity, and ultimately, the customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) that every business is advertently or inadvertently centered around. CCW Digital’s research regarding the first stat - (increased use of collaboration tools [Microsoft] Teams, Slack, etc) – (65.79%) is interestingly, nearly exactly congruent with Qualtrics’ - more than half of workers (65.8%) feel that company communications help them take action for their well-being, having a direct correlation on productivity levels, CSAT scores, and revenue. 

A need for human connection through a digital environment has been made apparent to many. Why? Simply put, digital communication creates a synergistic environment, where employees are motivated to collaborate and produce optimal results. 

Read More: A Pyschological Approach To Management And Leadership After A Socioeconomic Crisis

The 65% who have realized it, are taking action not only for the sake of their front line and employees’ psychological well-being, but for the productivity, quality B2C interactions, and output that are correlated with interactions and CSAT scores, an increasingly popular metric in today’s contact centers. Now in harsh economic circumstances and operational digital shifts, many are taking this new approach in order to achieve desired CSAT scores. 

Expedited digital adaptation

Increased emphasis on digital channels – 52.63%. The only practice that will disappear is the normal that we once knew. 

As I mentioned in a previous article, in 1999, Bill Gates wrote a book titled Business @ the Speed of Thought. Gates' prediction in the novel highlighted AI and automation’s impact on personal information, cloud communication, and everyday life for consumers. 

“Personal companions will be developed. They will connect and sync all your devices in a smart way, whether they are at home or in the office, and allow them to exchange data. The device will check your email or notifications, and present the information that you need.”

Technological innovation and digital transformation (such as self-service and chatbots, as Gates alluded to) are undoubtedly exponentially growing tickets to economic prosperity. While this seems like anything but reality during the COVID-19 pandemic (and along with it, harsh socioeconomic repercussions we’re all experiencing), there is light to be found after a pandemic. 

The crisis is forcing customer-centric businesses to rapidly expedite digital adaptation and online capabilities to operationalize business continuity – online events, virtual communication, streaming platforms, self-service, cloud technology, social media traffic are all undoubtedly surging. What will happen after the crisis ends and brands resume to normal business continuity plans? Will Zoom disappear? Will Twitter disintegrate? Of course not.

The only constant is change. And when a crisis comes to an end (and it will), businesses will use the tools they were forced to use to get through the pandemic as an additional benefit after one, a never ending cycle of continuous innovation.

Outsourcing partners

Outsourcing partners don’t meet performance standards – a shockingly low 7.89%. As on-premise call centers were standard operations for customer experience, they have been known as a cost center to many analysts. Requiring frequently updated and expensive, on-site hardware, social distancing and shelter-in-place policies have forced many contact centers and customer-centric organizations to find digital alternatives to operational infrastructures. We’re seeing a rise in cloud-based technologies, omnichannel communication solutions, and other outsourcing investments.

Even more interesting to note than transformation decisions itself, nearly 93% are satisfied with these decisions – decisions that should have been made before a pandemic, but highlighted during one none the less. 

Many outsourcing and tech solution providers have been going above and beyond to enhance their cloud capabilities for clients, and even offer temporary tradeoffs and long-term investments, such as free offerings.

As Simon Copcutt, our Head of Strategic Accounts recently stated:

“Great to see how so many of the leading solution providers we work with are opening up their products for use at no charge while the planet deals with Covid-19. 8x8, Appian Corporation, NICE inContact, Ring Central, [and] Salesforce,” to name a few. 

No one’s safe from the behavioral economic consequences brought upon by the coronavirus. But adapting to digital trends will give you the best chance at being on the favorable side of financial Darwinism after the coronavirus. 

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For media coverage, lead gen, and digital marketing inquiries, contact me at matt.wujciak@customermanagementpractice.com.