My Top 5 New Year’s Resolutions for Contact Centers
by Steve Bell, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Talkdesk. Read the original article here: Talkdesk.com
Cloud 9 Advisers. Supplier Spotlight: Talkdesk
As AI-based assistance moves increasingly to customer-facing roles to handle simple, rote queries, live agents will be left to handle more difficult questions. The strategic consequence of this is that agents will need to be equipped and empowered to handle these more complex issues. This may require changes in hiring practices, as well as enhanced training. It may also impact compensation, as these will be more senior roles. The good news is that AI will also be there to assist agents in handling these tougher questions, and finding qualified agents will be easier because they can be hired anywhere.
Contact centers need business agility to expand (and contract) their pool of agents and finding qualified staff in one location can be difficult. If agents can be located anywhere, your options to build a great team will exponentially grow.
Today’s generation of agents demands more empowerment, autonomy and flexibility in their roles. Sometimes referred to as the “Millennial factor”, this trend must be considered, particularly given the role’s already high turnover rates.
Recognize that subject matter experts may not exist within the walls of the traditional contact center — they may be in the legal, finance or engineering departments, for instance. These people have often been disconnected from the contact center because they are on a different phone system (UC), making collaboration difficult if not impossible.
This final resolution relates to the reality that traditional on-premises and first-generation cloud contact center platforms cannot support the ever-evolving nature of customer service. Technology will continue to evolve to support the distributed and empowered agent, and the enterprise subject matter expert. These technologies include:
- The Cloud: So agents can be untethered from desktops and work from home
- Mobile: So that agents can engage with customers from their mobile devices
- Modern Analytics: So supervisors can track and monitor their remote agents
- Modern Workforce Management: So supervisors can appropriately staff their remote agents according to call volume
- AI: So you can deliver more intelligent and automated customer interactions.
- The Convergence of CC (contact center) and UC (unified communications) systems: So agents can be better supported by subject matter experts anywhere in the company.
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