Customers are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of how they are treated when they contact businesses. In the wake of the pandemic, improving communication between businesses and their customers has become even more important.
Introduction
Many businesses are failing to adapt to the new demands of their customers. According to Twilio’s study of UK consumers, only 11% feel able to communicate with businesses across channels (email, text or phone). As you can read in this guide, this is a contributing factor to how they perceive customer service.
A well-designed contact center is essential for modern business communication. It allows customer interactions to be handled in an efficient, personalized and empathetic way. This leads to better service and more satisfied customers. This guide highlights how customer expectations regarding communication have changed, and how to effectively use a contact center to enhance the customer experience.
How have our expectations of customer service changed?
Much has changed in recent years, including customers’ expectations of communication with businesses. According to a study by Hiver, 80% of consumers expect better service now than ever before. Demands have increased, both in terms of accessibility and expectations for fast and personalized service.
Customers want you to recognize their needs early on, listen to them and show empathy. Being understanding in an interaction builds loyalty and a stable customer base that attracts more customers. The same survey also shows that half of the consumers surveyed are most bothered by having to repeat their problems several times to support staff.
E-commerce, both in retail and digital services, has grown enormously worldwide. In Sweden alone, it increased by 40% in 2020. It has also become more important for businesses to set up a smart communication and telephony strategy. And to offer digital support as many purchases no longer require physical interactions.
E-commerce sites have become the main platform for communication. Customers also expect some form of round-the-clock service. It is no longer enough to have telephone support only during working hours (which also include lunch breaks at peak times!).
Customer experience is key today
A Salesforce survey of 15,600 B2B and B2C professionals shows that 80% consider the experience a company offers to be as important as its products and services. The strengthening of the customer experience is even more evident when you look at the other figures:
66% expect companies to understand their needs and expectations.
74% have used different channels to initiate and complete a transaction.
52% always expect personalized offers.
68% expect companies to show empathy.
91% say they are more likely to buy again after a positive experience.
What conclusions can we draw from this?
- The customer experience has become more important as customers have higher demands today.
- Customers expect a more personalized experience.
- They are expected to receive the same treatment regardless of the channel through which they contact you.
- They need to be offered a proactive service and have their problems resolved at first contact.
So how can a business offer this to its customers? The answer is the contact center.
What exactly is a contact center?
You probably know what a call center is. It’s a centralized location or platform where you can handle incoming and outgoing customer calls. But it’s becoming increasingly common for businesses to get a contact center. It gives you a 360 view of customer interactions and history so you can offer even better service.
You can also handle voice calls in a contact center, but the advantage here is that you get more information and can collect all customer interactions in one place. This means you can see when the customer last contacted you, their payment history and contact details without having to switch platforms. And the best kind of contact center gives you access to omnichannel.
So what is omnichannel?
Today, most companies are active and communicate with their customers through multiple channels. At the very least, you use phone and email. You may also have one or more social media accounts. So your customers have many ways to reach you.
But even if you are visible in all the channels available, you probably manage your communication in a separate platform. Your agents are switching between apps and often missing important information they need to help customers. This means that customers have to repeat their problems in each channel, leading to dissatisfaction and a feeling of poor service. In addition, it is difficult to maintain the same tone of voice across channels.
Those who contact you may feel that communication shifts depending on the platform, which can damage your brand. Omnichannel communication means you can manage communication from multiple channels on a single platform.
A contact center with omnichannel capabilities allows you to connect all your customer communications. For example, a customer can move freely between a chat conversation on your site and then continue via email. This means the customer can reach you in the channels that suit them best. The result? A reliable customer journey and satisfied customers.
What a modern contact center looks like
How your contact center should be designed depends to some extent on what type of business you are and what you deliver. But it’s possible to talk about general trends across all industries and we can use the insights of the enhanced customer experience here.
The main purpose of a contact center is to help customers solve their problems. It should be easy to contact you and the service and experience should be so good that you lay the foundation for loyal customers. It should also make work easier for you and your team.
According to Kearney, technology can reduce the time an agent spends on standard tasks by a third. An efficient contact center gives agents everything they need for valued customer contact in a simple way.
Let’s look at what makes a good contact center.
Get the full picture – including contact history
The platform will offer a holistic view of the customer with an aggregated contact history. Agents’ jobs are simplified by bringing up all previous interactions the customer had with the company in a contact card. Everything is recorded, from the customer using the chat and talking to a colleague to the person later talking to another agent about a new case.
Of course, this also makes it easier for the customer, as they don’t have to repeat what they have already said. By quickly grasping the customer’s problem, you can respond effectively and with understanding.
Accessibility – everywhere
Customers want to contact businesses on the device they are using at the time, be it via phone, tablet or computer. They also need to be able to reach you through multiple channels, such as voice calls, chat, social media or text messages. You therefore need to know where your users are and how they prefer to contact you. An omnichannel contact center is perfect for this.
Increased internal efficiency
If you usually manage all email contact in a shared inbox, you know that this often makes it difficult for agents to keep track of which tickets have been answered and who is doing what. It’s easy for tickets and customers to fall through the cracks. When everything is collected in one platform, you avoid these problems.
Agents can also collaborate more easily as they can, for example, jump in and take over a colleague’s case thanks to the contact cards that contain all customer data. With a cloud-based platform, agents can work from home or elsewhere as all data is stored in the cloud. This is also appreciated by managers as it is easy to keep track of everything no matter where they are.
Time savings
With a well-functioning contact center, fewer agents will be needed to perform tasks. With all information at your fingertips, you can help customers and solve problems faster. This allows you to focus more on time-consuming issues. This means you can increase efficiency without hiring more staff.
Instead, the company can plan its staffing more easily as you know during which periods the need is greater. During quieter periods, you can instead retrain parts of the workforce or let them work on other value-adding tasks.
Better insights into the company
Customers provide valuable insights and you need to make the most of them. The more relevant data you have about customers, the better customer experience you will be able to deliver. A contact center is full of data, making it a natural hub for gathering insights.
- Agents receive information on past order history, complaints and the like. This facilitates operational work and the ability to make quick decisions in everyday life.
- By collecting data on interactions, you can quickly see when queues tend to fill up, take this into account and put more agents to work during those times.
- It also facilitates your analytical and strategic work. You can analyze campaigns and their impact. How many people were interested in buying and how many bought? On which days of the week and times did customers shop more? There are really no limits to what can be measured and analyzed.
Overall: a better customer experience
A contact center is an important part if you want to strengthen the customer experience in your company, or rather, it is an invaluable part! A contact center is often the first interaction a customer has with your company. If you succeed in treating your customers professionally, they are more likely to return and ultimately become long-term, loyal customers.
Take it to the next level with omnichannel
Contact centers are usually not integrated with each other, which can be a problem. Information is located in different places and your team needs to use different platforms to carry out their daily work. This results in a lack of productivity and dissatisfied agents. This in turn leads to increased costs and a reduced return on investment.
Omnichannel provides a complete customer experience
The aim is for customers to be able to move seamlessly between channels – quickly and frictionlessly. They shouldn’t have to repeat themselves or fill in the same information several times. For the most complete customer experience possible, omnichannel comes into play.
Omnichannel brings together different marketing channels, allowing you to create a consistent customer experience across all platforms. You get a better insight into potential customers’ needs and lead them on regardless of platform – which also increases customer conversion.
- All the channels you are available in are synchronized with each other so no customer has to repeat their information. Even if they’ve contacted you by phone before and now get in touch via chat, the agent in question gets all the conversation history.
- All interactions are visible in the system and reporting is easily retrieved both in real time and historically.
- Your agents only need to use one platform in their work.
Telavox Contact Center
The main advantage of Telavox Contact Center is that it is part of our existing solution. Instead of using yet another application, our contact center solution is an integrated part of the platform where you and your colleagues communicate internally and with customers. This paves the way for smoother internal communication and faster, better responses to customers.
With Telavox Contact Center, it’s easier to give customers the support they need and they can contact you in the channel they prefer. Agents’ workday is also greatly improved as they can work more productively because they can handle customers’ requests in one system. It’s much easier to get an overview of what the customer needs and for the support manager to keep the organization running smoothly.
Main benefits of Telavox Contact Center
Making it easier for your agents
The agent’s workday is made easier by a 360 view of the customer, giving previous contact details – regardless of the channel. Cases can be created manually, deferred or handled directly in a fast way. The agent easily changes the channel of communication and can move a Facebook conversation to an email while keeping the conversation history.
Making work more efficient
Having all customer dialogs on one platform frees up time that you would otherwise spend on switching platforms and other non-value-added activities. The support manager will be able to see the agent workload and make operational decisions more easily.
Offer better customer service
Your customer support will run more smoothly and give you an overview of possible improvements. It will simply be easier to see how your customer service can be improved.
A cloud-based solution
Our platform is fully cloud-based. This means you have access to all the information you need wherever you are. Deliver superb service in the office, at home or via mobile in a secure and easy way.
Customer Success Manager
When you start working with us, you will be assigned a Customer Success Manager. With the same contact person from the start, you’ll quickly get to know each other and you’ll always know who to contact when you need help.
Key features
Channels
Voice calls, emails, chat, social media and more. Streamline your customer support and the opportunities for a customer to contact you by bringing all conversations into one platform.
Advanced routing
Ensure incoming calls are processed and routed efficiently. You can prioritize between queues, easily log agents in and out, and have different strategies for handling calls.
Ready-made templates
Do you regularly receive similar questions about opening hours or a particular service? Then you can create a template for this that agents then use when these questions come up. Agents easily modify their scripts and create personalized responses based on all incoming customer data and requests all in one place.
Omnichannel
Omnichannel creates new opportunities. With omnichannel, you can easily extend your voice capabilities to include email, social media, chatbots and more. You get a unified view of all communications, ensuring a better experience for both customers and agents.
Superior performance and quality
Get in-depth statistics to evaluate customer service performance. Make well-informed and data-driven decisions.
Tagging
All incoming cases can be tagged and categorized. You can create a category for invoices and under it list tags related to the topic, such as incorrect payments. You get an overview of all cases and it makes it much easier to retrieve statistics and follow up.
In conclusion
Customer behavior and expectations have changed in recent years. Customers still want to feel special, even if the contact is not physical. This makes competent agents or real people in chat invaluable.
A contact center allows you and your team to provide your customers with the best possible service by gathering all information in one place. Thanks to omnichannel capabilities, you can meet your customers where they are. This means you can offer superb service whether they call, email or get in touch via social media.
Want to know more about our contact center or try a demo?
