Putting Customers First in the New Digital World

The move to digital is an urgent priority for business leaders as they strive to drive operational efficiencies and competitive edge. But for those working in customer-facing businesses, the new world of digital brings radical change and significant dislocation.

Some workers who had found their niche in the classic contact centre environment are having to acquire new skills to deal with today’s multichannel world. Others used to fulfilling a back-office role are now being asked to become front-line workers and directly engage with customers to resolve issues and deliver exceptional service, all of which needs to be tracked.

Beyond that, in today’s environment where customer service is increasingly a key differentiator, it is important that organisations don’t neglect this.

Empower Front-Line Workers to Resolve Issues First Time

The narrative around digital customer transformation is about automation, artificial intelligence and connecting and collaborating across the entire business.

Within many organisations, this is important to enable coordination between their customers who are making enquiries and their co-workers, such as field engineers or financial advisors through to customer service agents, who can deliver the expertise they need to resolve their problems.

Also, contact centre teams need to understand digital technology, so that they can pull in relevant intelligence from third-party solutions and applications to help answer queries and effectively triage calls, set reminders or create workflows to employees in the middle and back office as and when required.

Digital Customer Transformation Is Now on the CEO’s Shoulders

This level of interaction that front-line workers need to have with the organisation’s new digital customer environment explains why it is so important that they are brought on board from the beginning as the organisation moves to digital.

The need for senior level buy-in to any digital customer transformation project is often highlighted and is critically important. Senior decision-makers need to have the vision and the boldness to take a decision that they believe will be for the good of the business and its customers.

Join the Digital Customer Revolution

As they move to digital, businesses need to put in place a step-by-step migration plan. They need contact centre systems and functionality that allows them to connect to customers and to resources across the business seamlessly to ensure they are always delivering the best possible customer service.

Involving front-line workers in the process is critically important. The move to digital and the ongoing roll-out of a digital customer approach must be an enterprise-wide undertaking. Everybody within the organisation needs to be involved.

The front-line worker is key here as these individuals are most likely to engage with customers and represent the brand to external parties – and they often act as ambassadors for the business’s services and solutions and prevailing culture. And yet they are frequently left out of the overall vision as the board and information workers take precedence. That must never be the case moving forwards.

Like the process of transformation going on around us, front-line workers are all about making connections, driving collaboration, and delivering high-quality customer service. They are key to the digital future.

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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.