Every business constantly seeks to enhance customer engagement. With many channels available for communication, organizations must build better processes to support their customer journeys while simplifying the job of support agents.
As expectations grow, it’s important to provide agents and customers with the appropriate tools to help meet goals and needs. While this can be challenging, there’s a variety of solutions.
For many industries, providing effective self-service options is at the forefront of customer engagement solutions. But there’s room to grow when it comes to self-service.
In fact, only 3% of respondents report that they’re able to completely solve their issues with self-service options, according to CCW Digital’s “Enhancing Customer Engagement” report.
The same report shows that only 15% of people find chatbots trustworthy. These numbers are strikingly low and suggest that all platforms of communication need updating.
Many organizations are looking to provide high quality service across all channels of communication. For example, when a customer chooses to use chat to connect with you, the experience should match that of a phone call with an agent.
While it’s nearly impossible to remove all bad experiences from customer interactions, you can address the root cause in many cases.
Move Forward With Technology
While customers expect positive experiences, it is the negative ones that leave a lasting memory. To avoid common missteps, it’s important to keep your contact centre technology up to date to meet always-evolving customer expectations. Technology can be hard to implement, and the upkeep involved can cause additional issues.
“Great technology that’s too difficult to deploy will never reach your workforce and will never improve your service experience,” states Richard Dumas, Vice President of Product Marketing at Five9. Due to its ease of implementation and wide capabilities, deploying AI can improve your workforce and agent experiences.
Acknowledge Agent Burnout Is Real
By continuing to rely on old technology, you’re risking creating negative experiences for both agents and customers as it causes a cycle of turnover. This is far from the recipe for success.
“According to a recent Metrigy Study, customer satisfaction increases by 26% when agent turnover rates are less than 15% per year,” says Dumas. To change the harmful cycle of agent turnover, look to technology that makes agents’ jobs easier and less stressful.
Combine AI and Agents
Maximizing the capabilities of AI can prevent agent burnout while simultaneously improving customer engagement. With digital engagement, customers expect smooth interactions with your agents while solving their issues, but outdated technology can get in the way.
Implementing AI to partner with humans can resolve this issue. By combining the creativity and emotional intelligence of humans with the speed of AI, contact centre agents become more productive.
Virtual agents allow you to automate simple tasks, giving agents more time to focus on higher value work which can, in turn, reduce burnout.
Prioritize Understanding Customers
To achieve long-term success, it’s important to develop a detailed understanding of what your customers need. Sentiment analysis data can allow you to follow how customers feel across each channel.
And by better understanding what customers are feeling during their interaction, you can more quickly make decisions to improve areas at the root of negative reactions. Practical AI also provides great opportunity.
“This can also help contact centre managers understand the root cause of longer handle times or decrease in automation rates,” says Dumas. With practical AI, the available information is abundant. The ability to identify issues and act accordingly can allow you to stay one step ahead of customer demand — and competitors.
Deploy the Power of Agent Assist
The first step in preparing an agent to deal with arising issues is making sure they have the tools needed to handle any situation.
Customers are all different; they each have their own problems and needs. Agent assistance tools can provide real-time help.
Capabilities include contextual history with the customer, content related to their call, and advice on the next best action for the agent. Implementing agent assist tools can spark improvement in customer engagement while also retaining engaged and reliable agents.
Keeping up with customer expectations can be challenging as they change quickly. However, AI can help you stay ahead of the curve.
This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Five9 – View the Original Article
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About Five9
Five9 provides end-to-end solutions with omnichannel routing, analytics, WFO, and AI to increase agent productivity and deliver tangible business results. Find out more about Five9
Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.
Author: Five9
Published On: 8th Sep 2022
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