Contact Centre Optimisation

Customer engagement is one of the most competitive industries in the world. Whether it’s BPOs, contact centres or in-house company customer engagement teams, companies are constantly levelling up and on the lookout for new ways to get an edge over competitors. Constant contact centre optimisation is a must if you want to stay relevant in the market.

 

Contact Centre Optimisation

Customer engagement is one of the most competitive industries in the world. Whether it’s BPOs, contact centres or in-house company customer engagement teams, companies are constantly levelling up and on the lookout for new ways to get an edge over competitors. Constant contact centre optimisation is a must if you want to stay relevant in the market.

 

The goals of contact centre optimisation are pretty clear: after all, every decision-maker in this industry aspires to increase the productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of their contact centre’s team. Everyone wants to handle more calls in less time, increase sales, and satisfy customers better. However, the real question is what are the best means to those ends, and that’s where things get more complex.

 

The days when running a contact centre was mostly about traditional workforce management and strategising are far gone. In 2023, contact centre optimisation is often synonymous with staying up to date with the latest technological advancements that can make your processes more efficient at a better cost. 

 

Here, we present you with some specific implementations or measures you can take right now to optimise the efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness of your contact centre: 

Key Steps for Contact Centre Optimisation

 

Improve Customer Experience

A happy customer is a loyal customer. It should seem obvious, but unfortunately, many contact centres don’t seem to have internalised this essential truth.

 

However, the data leaves no room for doubt: PwC found that 73% of customers say that customer experience is an extremely important factor in their purchasing decisions. Around 32% of those surveyed said that they would walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience with the customer care team. According to Customerthink, 9 out of 10 customers won’t purchase from a company again after three or even less poor customer service interactions.

 

The bottom line is clear: contact centre optimisation, as well as a brand’s popularity and reputation, are dependent on making the customer’s experience as seamless, smooth, and pleasant as possible. This leads us to the next point.

Integrate your customer communication channels

In 2023, being present across all channels is vital for customer satisfaction. People use different devices and channels to talk to each other in their daily lives, and it only makes sense that they would want to do the same when communicating with businesses.

 

In a survey, Salesforce found that 75% of consumers look forward to a consistent experience across multiple engagement channels, and 73% will likely switch brands if they don’t get it.

 

If you want to provide your customers with a consistently satisfactory experience across channels and achieve unparalleled levels of contact centre optimisation, your best bet is to provide an Omnichannel Customer Experience. An Omnichannel contact centre brings all communication channels together into one hub, which will make interactions faster, smoother, and more effective.

Use workflow automation and intelligent call routing

A survey by Salesforce revealed that 83% of customers expect to engage with someone immediately when contacting a company. While it might not be possible to meet those expectations every time, intelligent call routing software can be a significant step in contact centre optimization that will take you pretty close to that ideal. 

 

Using AI automation tools, you can categorise calls based on real-time customer and agent data in order to direct customers to the right agent faster.

 

Some platforms, like Connex One, have workflow automation tools like Flow, which will allow you to easily create sophisticated rulesets and criteria to route inbound calls the smart way, reducing wait times and making for a more seamless and satisfying customer experience.

Use Speech Analytics software

Pairing up with AI speech analytics tools to look deeper into your agents’ conversations with customers will give you access to unparalleled depths of insight. 

 

Keyword analysis will inform you about tendencies, trends, and recurring queries right on the spot; sentiment analysis will read your callers’ emotions as they speak and measure their mood at different points of the conversation. 

 

This information can be incredibly useful for teaching agents how to handle certain types of calls or planning your call routing in a way that matches the particularities of your market, enabling your contact centre’s optimisation.

Integrate Conversational AI

According to research conducted by Userlike, a significant majority—60%—prefer interacting with a live agent over engaging with a chatbot, primarily due to doubts about the chatbot’s ability to accurately understand their questions.

 

However, when appropriately utilized, chatbots can be remarkably effective. A 2023 study by Gartner revealed that chatbots achieved resolution rates of 52% for inquiries related to orders and purchases, and 48% for returns or cancellations. As AI continues to evolve, these rates are expected to soar in the years ahead.

 

In summary, while contact center chatbots can serve as valuable tools when deployed correctly, they cannot replace the importance of human support. The more advanced the AI behind a chatbot, the quicker it can respond to standard queries compared to any human agent.

 

A proficiently designed chatbot can free up staff from handling routine inquiries, though it will not entirely replace them. Instead, it empowers them to focus on high-value interactions requiring a human touch or specialized expertise.

 

Keep your agents motivated

Wondering how to improve your call center agents’ performance? The best way to do that and to achieve effective levels of contact centre optimisation is to make their jobs more rewarding. But how?

 

An ICMI survey showed that 87% of call centre agents experience moderate to high levels of stress: 71% of them attribute that to system and tool inefficiencies. In the same survey, 100% of the organisations agreed that agent morale & satisfaction directly affects customer experience.  

 

“When you ask business leaders what’s most important to them, they’ll tell you customer experience, customer service,” said Justin Robbins, senior analyst at ICMI. “But their actions are completely contrary to that. They know that their agents are stressed out and the main reason is their tools and technology aren’t efficient.”

 

The bottom line is clear: the best way to ensure your agents can do their job in a smooth and efficient way is to provide them with the best tools, like an omnichannel platform to free them up from menial tasks and enable them to switch channels seamlessly. 

 

But there are even more options: Connex One’s platform, for example, comes with a Gamification module, an incentive system that rewards the best performers in your team and turns a challenging job into a game. And what’s more; it will also allow you to choose the game’s rules, standards, and rewards at will to suit your contact centre’s particularities. 

 

The bottom line

As we mentioned earlier, one of the primary responsibilities of modern contact centre decision-makers is to keep themselves informed about the latest technological advancements that can enhance their operations’ effectiveness. 

 

However, this can feel like a challenging and never ending task for contact centre leaders; technology advances quickly and new applications and tools are constantly emerging. That’s why Connex One is the ideal customer engagement solution: it’s an evolving and adaptable Omnichannel software platform that grows with your needs and requirements, and we regularly add new features based on our clients’ input. 

 

To learn more about how Connex One is captaining the revolution of Omnichannel Customer Experience and connecting contact centres with more customers all across the globe, get in touch with our team at hello@connexone.co.uk or request a free discovery session of our platform.

 

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