Customers of today are intelligent, informed and digitally educated and their expectation of customer experience has been pushed to a new level.
For an SMB, the challenge can be to appear bigger and provide “big company” customer service and experiences without big company resources. As such, the need for digital transformation becomes critical when looking to gain and retain customers, with one study revealing that 83 per cent of customers claim good customer service is the most principal factor outside of price and product when deciding what to buy.
The goal of digital transformation is to utilise invention and innovation, to enhance both the customer experience and efficiency of the contact centre. This is done through the adoption of digital technologies such as software applications designed to act as the entire contact centre.
With customers now having access to ever-expanding digital options for communication. It becomes super important for businesses to allow their customers to connect through the channels of their choice.
The following steps are a combination of strategies highlighting how innovative technologies and a mindset that embraces the digital frontier, are all part of the digital transformation process for an SMB contact centre.
Step 1: The omnichannel experience
Recent research shows that 9 out of 10 consumers want an omnichannel experience with seamless service between communication channels. This makes the adoption of a platform that incorporates a variety of different channels a necessity for any business looking to target the true width of their customer base. But a critical value add is to be able to join up these disparate conversations so the agent has full context.
A resourceful omnichannel solution provides a platform for customers to engage with you through a wide range of sources. These can include new emerging digital channels such as social media and webchat, whilst also providing enhanced experiences with older communication channels such as SMS, email, and phone calls. As an example, robust contact centres can enhance an older communication channel such as phone calls, through significant improvements, such as the implementation of call backs and virtual queueing software like Keep My Place In Queue.
Step 2: Unify the omnichannel experience
Providing a variety of channels is the foundation of any contact centre. However, unifying all these streams to be accessible by agents within one intuitive interface can be overlooked by a business, despite it being a significant benefit to companies that have a limited pool of agents, or a high volume of customers utilising the full range of channels available to them.
True digital transformation implies an accessible, zero hassle platform that completely unifies all communication channels. In doing this, agents are given a much more accessible interface that in turn, allows them greater control over enhancing the customer experience by limiting the time required to both learn and navigate multiple platforms to engage with different channels.
Step 3: Equip your agents
Agents are the lifeblood of a successful contact centre. As customer facing assets, their success comes down to a combination of individual skill, good management and most importantly, access to the right tools for the right situation.
These tools can range from the capability to view conversation history with a customer, to a dynamic ACD management system that automatically places them in wrap-up, and even CRM integration that allows for journalling. Together, this equips agents so that their focus can primarily be on the provision of an exceptional customer experience.
Step 4: Enhance your agent management capabilities
Empowering agents through effective supervisor management is another key contributing factor to the success of a contact centre. With research showing that companies that employ agent empowerment programmes and processes outperform their counterparts by up to 70 per cent.
To do this, supervisors require their own extensive set of contact centre tools that provides them agile and in-depth asset management. These tools include silent monitoring, barge-in, analytics dashboards and more that enable them to review, support, empower agents and construct the environment for productive gamification.
Step 5: Always look to improve
Improvements can take a range of different forms when it comes to an SMB contact centre, some examples include:
- Harnessing insights gained via analytics platforms to optimise.
- Adapting to channels utilised by your customers.
- Integrating with external platforms such as CRM.
- Adopting software that compliments the specific needs of your customers.
- Optimising management reporting lines between agents and supervisor.
For more information on contact centre solutions, visit www.kakaposystems.com.