Where Are We With Customer Experience Transformation?

Josh Kivenko of Lifesize shares research into the current state of customer experience transformations and cloud contact centres.

CX Transformation Is a Top Priority

When asked about their priorities, the majority of respondents placed customer satisfaction at the top of the list. In fact, a third of the organizations surveyed have CX transformation planned for 2021.

The pandemic is responsible for this shift in prioritization away from more perennial choices like revenue growth; customers now interact differently with brands and agents are often no longer located in a central contact centre. These changes have caused executives to take a step back and consider what they need to do differently to adjust and ensure a quality customer experience.

For some, that will mean introducing new interaction channels to their contact centres, including video, SMS text and web chat (the research revealed that customer ratings increase along with the number of channels supported), as well as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to boost agent productivity.

Remote Work Revolutionized the Contact Centre

Currently, 70 percent of contact centre agents are working from home — and most will continue to do so. While the initial challenge for organizations in shifting to work-from-home was sourcing talent and deploying technology to support agents, future challenges will include scaling IT workflows.

IT responsibilities have expanded to encompass agent internet access and network security across a distributed workforce.

However, the successful and swift transition to remote work chalks up to a win for agents.

Going forward, flexible working hours and remote work arrangements will become a huge boon for employee retention — critical for an industry plagued by high attrition rates.

The necessity for remote work also inspired many contact centres to adopt cloud technology (65 percent said they are more likely to use the cloud since working from home), which opens up possibilities for even more work flexibility and automation to improve the agent experience.

The Future of Contact Centres Is in the Cloud

Contact centres that wish to innovate will be hard-pressed to do so without moving to the cloud. Implementing AI solutions, integrating the contact centre with unified communications, adding more interaction channels and expanding globally all rely on the cloud for success.

In fact, most major initiatives that take contact centres into true CX transformation are better when implemented in the cloud.

With the right contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) partner, a contact centre can be up and running in the cloud quickly, and remain agile for years to come.

Already, 75 percent of respondents who are cloud-enabled prefer their cloud contact centre over their on-premise call centre, and 45 percent say their cloud implementation was better than they expected.

This research and more was presented during a Lifesize webinar. To view the recording, click here.