Richard Kenny explores what the future may hold for the contact centre industry in 2015.
There is a growing recognition among contact centres that a big change is coming as the customer experience becomes a fundamental focus across the business. Merely having a department called “customer service” implies that a select few people have a relationship with customers – looking forward, this organisation structure simply won’t hold.
Everyone in the organisation will realise they need to be involved with customer interactions to guarantee a better experience. Of course, the organisational change that this change in mind-set will lead to won’t happen overnight as it demands a fundamental breakdown of traditional business structures.
The customer journey will be re-examined
Where companies will begin on this transition in 2015 is by re-examining the customer journey – defining what channels their customers use when they source information or when they have any sort of interaction with the business. The first thing to realise is that people don’t just have one isolated interaction with a brand. They employ multiple channels when making a purchase, both to find information relevant to the product or service they are interested in and ultimately to buy it. Mapping the customer journey will allow businesses to get a better understanding of this process and structure their business around it so they can deliver a better overall experience.
That said, there still need to be moderators to direct customers to the appropriate expertise when they contact the business. It is unlikely people will be calling directly into a technology provider’s engineering department, for example, so companies will need these brokers to bridge the gap between customers and the individual parts of their organisation.
Office communications and customer experience will be bridged together
Office communications devices, particularly those enabled with Unified Communications (UC) technology, will play a large part in supporting this approach. These tools tap into every one of the digital devices workers use today to seamlessly connect all the people within the business and will be very valuable in bridging the gap between office communications and the customer experience.
Devices will evolve beyond basic audio resources
2015 will also mark “the year of Contextual Intelligence”, particularly as more contact centres move over to soft phones. Businesses will see their devices evolve beyond basic audio resource to become intelligent tools that link with their PCs and their software.
Richard Kenny
These tools allow users to know exactly where their colleagues are if they are available, which means they can connect customers directly to someone that can address their questions with no downtime.
We’ll see some of the first full-scale implementations of WebRTC
2015 will also be the year we start to see some of the first full-scale implementations of WebRTC. The technology has the potential to reshape customer interactions by allowing for a direct connection between people’s browsers and the contact centre – which allows users to get the information they need from an associate without having to pick up a phone. In other words, WebRTC gives customers the means to redefine the way they interact with businesses.
With thanks to Richard Kenny at Plantronics
Author: Megan Jones
Published On: 17th Dec 2014 - Last modified: 12th Dec 2018
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