And How They Influence the Customer’s True Experience

Since the advent of the telephone, folks recognized the value of this technology as a means to instantly connect to others through this peer-to-peer interaction. As early as the 1950s, groups of people realized they could pool their dialing resources to divvy up pages from the phone book (yeah, the old four-pound, alphabetized paperback directory) to call potential customers en masse to sell their wares and services. So our collective awareness of an inbound/outbound call center (or telemarketer) is not a new concept. However, as technology continued to expand over the years a more dynamic process was required. The Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) model became the leading resource for omnichannel communication centered on exceptional customer experiences. Today CCaaS plays a critical role in the end-to-end, outcome-driven operational support that fulfills customer engagement needs. 

Technology evolves constantly. We expect as much. But customer contact volume is at an all-time high with more than 55 billion agent-assisted contacts handled in the United States annually, 66% of Contact Centers are found in the United States, and Statista has reported that more than 55% of Contact Centers around the world have annual revenue in the billions. 

As businesses shift their focus toward improving customer experience to promote higher brand awareness and customer retention rates, what qualities do they look for in a Contact Center to ensure proper alignment between organizations? The CCaaS support that Bitwise Industries offers revolves around these three things: 1) the importance of connecting with the audience at each point of contact, 2) recruiting a team of operators that demonstrate a strong sense of emotional intelligence, and 3) deploying smart tech at every level. Let’s look at these three pillars in more detail. 

A Significant Connection

Did you know that 60% of consumers say they have stopped doing business with a brand due to poor customer service? That’s potentially two-thirds of a revenue stream walking away because they were unhappy with a professional interaction. Inversely, 89% of customers are retained by companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement. The significance of a customer connection that is engaging and adds value to their perception of an organization should be obvious. How to get there might not be as clear to some. 

Customers want to be heard. This means businesses need a Contact Center that authentically represents their voice, business, and brand. As companies begin to embrace the customer experience as the focal point of all interactions, the inherent value of empathy and active listening takes a front seat to the analytics and technology used to equip Contact Center agents with the tools necessary to fulfill consistent positive interactions. Customer satisfaction, brand positivity, and emotional IQ are the new currency and increased ROI will follow. 

The customer’s experience will have a profound effect on loyalty and brand perception. When engaged customers connect with engaged employees, companies can experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes. Customer experience is predominantly influenced by providing accurate and knowledgeable service, short wait times, friendly service that validates concerns, issue resolution on the first attempt, and effortless interactions. 

When a Contact Center clearly understands what matters to your organization’s customers, and is able to satisfy those key elements, good things happen for all parties involved. 

The Art of Recruiting

With the current shift of focus to experience-based interactions, emotional intelligence is pivotal in building personable customer relationships. Creating that customer-centric environment starts with cultivated employees who are able to use emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management) to their benefit. With that, successful Contact Centers are recruiting top-tier talent to handle increasingly complex customer queries. How? By expanding training programs, offering higher salaries, improving benefits options, maintaining ethical corporate responsibility, and deploying flexible work arrangements. When interviewing potential Contact Centers, it is important for organizations to ask how the Contact Center handles these points to make sure their staff will treat your customers in a way that you can truly approve of. 

Of course, you can take your inquiries one step further and discuss the Contact Center’s management approach to developing and maintaining their employees. Contact Centers that are forward-thinking in their customer experience tactics will rely on leadership and management to empower their Contact Center employees. The availability and engagement of supervisors directly contributes to that agent’s performance because they feel the sustained support from a network of more experienced employees. Additionally, a leadership team that continues to focus on an agent’s positive attributes can easily increase company and employee morale, thus leading to higher emotional intelligence and greater customer engagement.

“86% of customers claim that a positive emotional connection with a Contact Center agent would make them likely to do business with you again.”

Your customers want to feel valued before they fully trust your company. With properly placed empathy, integrity, and follow through, great Contact Center agents will be empowered to make sure that your customers feel it, creating the opportunity to retain their loyalty for your brand and nurturing many years of future purchases for your company.

Smart Tech is Smarter

This holistic approach to fulfilling the customer experience rings hollow without the technology backbone required to support the needs of the customer and the agent fulfilling their request. A full-service Contact Center will use every tool in the shed to enable organizations to manage their customer interactions through any channel of communication—voice, web, chat, SMS, or video. This omnichannel interaction is a company’s lifeline to customers. Within that is another layer of Contact Center software that is paramount to managing expectations of a hiring organization. 

A leading Contact Center will use new technologies, software, and artificial intelligence (AI) to increase productivity and enhance the customer’s interactions with the goal of increasing customer growth, retention, and cost reduction. In addition to routing customer inquiries, phone calls, emails, and other communications to the appropriate resource, numerous Contact Centers use these key features:

• Automatic call distribution
• Interactive voice response
• Computer telephony integration
• Automated dialer
• Workforce management technology
• Process automation
• Quality and performance management tech

To increase your ROI even further, an organization looking to elevate its own resources should hire a Contact Center that is equipped to handle the Customer Relationship Management platform (CRM) of your choosing. There are many out there, but the best of the best is Salesforce (in our humble opinion). This complementary pairing offers distinct advantages to your organization’s sales engine, customer service outreach, and relationship building tools. It’s the one communication channel that you do not want to overlook because it can provide your company with so much relevant information regarding customer interactions.

So What Does this Mean?

When you dive into the practice of CCaaS to uncover the best tools and tactics used to promote a great customer experience, any business should consider these tangible outcomes before hiring a Contact Center. 

• Will they improve your overall customer experience through meaningful interactions?
• Will their agents be the public-facing voice that will build your brand?
• Will they provide the technology services to add additional value to your company?
• Will they reach your short-term and long-term goals?

There are other questions to ask, and if you’re looking for someone to process this move with, we’d love for you to consider reaching out to Bitwise Industries. We know a thing or two, and we’re in the business of helping.

Let Us Help

Bitwise Industries specializes in custom software development, Salesforce implementation and administration, and Contact Center-as-a-Service. Our technology professionals have deep experience applying cutting-edge technology solutions to help entities of all sizes navigate the technology landscape to find solutions to optimize their operations.

This post was written by Jeff Rickels, Technical Writer for Bitwise Industries. When he’s not writing, he’s wondering if Jar Jar Binks really was an undercover Sith then how would the Star Wars universe turn out? Yeah, nerd stuff.

If you’re interested in uncovering the tech possibilities available to your organization or want to find more ways to increase your ROI with technology, click this link to schedule some time with one of our experts.