ENTER OUR CCAAS CHECKPOINT
Let’s talk about your recent CCaaS performance. Do any of the following disappointing metrics sound familiar?
Many call centers are currently experiencing…
- Employee Turnover/Attrition
- Diminished Employee Satisfaction/Morale
- Diminished Customer Satisfaction
- Poor Rep Schedule Adherence (aka Attendance)
- Low Rep Occupancy (actual Reps working/available hours)
- Other Unsatisfactory KPIs: Handle Time, Service Level, etc.
- Call Quality issues
- High Customer Abandon Rates
Do these issues ring a bell?
Post-covid, call centers are left with crossed wires: disorganized technology and disparate, broken culture, both of which degrade the quality of customer experience. Call centers are in need of sustainable solutions to help revive employee productivity and ensure, as the emphasis rises, that customer experience is of the highest quality– and that the technology you utilize supports both.
H2: SO, HOW DO YOU ACHIEVE HARMONY BETWEEN CULTURE, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY?
Let’s discuss the biggest problems that threaten this delicate balance, and how to solve them.
Problem #1: Are you providing the best Customer Experiences? You need to be.
Customer experience is a more vital differentiator than ever before. As the digital shift progresses, stoked further by conditions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer use of cloud technology is skyrocketing. People are no longer willing to settle for subpar experiences and outdated technology, and customers’ communication preferences have shifted dramatically toward digital, omnichannel platforms.
To put it plainly: no one wants to call customer service anymore. Everyone is using digital communication, even your oldest customers, and as for your youngest customers, they don’t want to call anyone ever.
Chat, SMS, email, and other methods of communication are reigning supreme, and these technologies should serve as a liaison for high-quality individual performance by customer service representatives. Both the technology supporting omnichannel, digital communications and the satisfaction of customers throughout interactions need to be emphasized.
After making the options available for multiple communication methods comes the more difficult capture: ensuring that employees are up to the job of managing them.
Problem #2: Trouble Managing a Post-Covid Call Center Workforce
As COVID-19 made its way around the globe, call center employees everywhere were sent home, and companies instated quick-fixes to bridge the gap between new necessities and old infrastructure. Culture was left out of the conversation, to huge detriment.
The culture that once hallmarked call centers came to a halt when working from home commenced. The sudden change posed a huge problem for supervisors, whose efforts to boost morale and productivity relied on environmental factors held in a physical room– think balloons in a cubicle, employee of the month posters, and a real-life community fostered by in-person interactions. Digital adaptations have failed to create the same effects, leading to worsening employee performance at a critical time: poor customer service majorly tarnishes brand reputation and a downturn in brand loyalty, especially in the modern communications climate.
Most people have adapted extremely well to working from home, and many have no desire (or incentive) to go back to the office. Yet, workers are feeling isolated, lonely, and unsupported, and they want the culture they once knew to be nurtured in a digital environment. Employee retention and performance hinge on your ability to provide this to your team.
Problem #3: Technology Triage: Does your digital solution hold up?
Most call centers, pre-COVID, were operating with on-prem technology as a critical facet of their architecture. Pieces of the technology central to operations were suddenly left to gather dust in a vacant room, and IT departments struggled to connect home-workers to both customers and each other. This led to quick fixes with shaky solutions, constructed with the idea that people would return to work in no-time. As we know now, this was not the case.
It’s time to rip off the band-aid: companies need to replace the rushed, temporary solutions instated during the pandemic, and the nearly obsolete legacy technology they hold onto, with sustainable, modern CCaaS alternatives.
Communications technology (the phone system, contact center software/hardware) was already evolving pre-Covid, and it has been massively accelerated as a result of the pandemic. You may be wondering what the advantages are– are these new solutions really routing calls better? If not, what’s all the noise about, and where are the hundreds of million dollars in R&D going?
CUT THROUGH THE NOISE AND REACH PERFECT HARMONY WITH TMG
With all of these issues plaguing your contact center, we know one thing for sure: you’re already tired, overextended, and looking for a way to make changes without sacrificing all of your time and resources.
You’ve probably realized by now that most vendors are capitalizing on your choice paralysis: in today’s marketplaces, we have so many choices that it can actually be more draining to have to make a decision than it would be to choose from a handful of options. In this case, we’re referring to enterprise-level vendors and providers, whose household names are often shortlisted by busy CIOs and IT leaders looking to save time and energy on the research process. Their branding stands out in a sea of smaller, more similar competitors, and therefore continue to bring in the most business, regardless of quality or how their services might impact your specific business.
At TMG, we specialize in matching you with the right vendor– not necessarily the biggest, the flashiest, or the most popular. In fact, our CCaaS specialists will evaluate your unique challenges and goals, the ailing symptoms of your call center, and your goals for the future, sorting through our trusted vendors to bring you the most productive, uniquely matched shortlist.
Looking to break the bad CX cycle, win over your customers, and re-energize your contact center? Look no further. Tap TMG about CCaaS today.
