The New Year has just begun and companies are at work trying to improve on every level. In the contact center industry, a major issue in recent years has been the customer experience. Whether it’s call resolution times, lack of omnichannel presence, or customer hold times, contact centers have been struggling to provide customer service at the level their customers expect. In his recent article, Michael Becker addresses this issue by pointing out that these contact centers that are falling short are probably not focusing on customer behavior, which includes contacting the company on multiple platforms at the same time in hopes of resolving the issue on their own while speaking to an agent. Multichannel customer service is critical to contact center success. The article offers the following five contact center stats for predicting customer experience trends in 2017.
5) Quick resolution times
Over sixty percent of customers believe that the most important factor of customer service and the customer experience is having their issue resolved quickly, or at least by the first person they contact. Becker says that while there’s no magic formula for quick resolutions, some key contributors to success include avoiding putting the customers on hold or transferring them, offering self-service options for customers, and allowing the agents to work more freely without having to do unnecessary steps or tasks.
4) The five most popular customer service channels
According to Becker, the most important customer service channels in order are phone, email, self-service and search, and chat. Currently, over three quarters of customers prefer phone calls and human interaction, but the projection is that self-service or service without live agents will be the dominant customer service channel in less than five years. For the time being, it’s best to continue to train human agents to service customers in-person and online.
3) U.S. customers hate waiting and being transferred
If your customers have to wait a minute to wait a minute before their call is answered, it’s annoying. If they have to wait up to five minutes on hold, it’s painful. If they have to wait up to ten minutes on hold, you’re going to have to do some serious explaining to them. Once you get to the ten minute mark and beyond, customers will hang up and never call your company again. Customers in the United States absolutely hate waiting for their call to be answered and they hate being transferred to other agents and departments. In order to fight potential long waiting times, Beck recommend using your analytics to anticipate the busiest times for your contact center and staff accordingly and also use the CRM data to send the customers to the right agent for their needs.
2) Contact centers will experience growth
Becker’s article states that 96% of businesses are expecting growth in their contact centers over the course of the next two years. There are a variety of reasons for this expected growth, including new technology and software such as cloud solutions and the need to keep up with customer experience demands. The challenge for contact centers is making sure their level of customer experience quality grows with their technology and service offerings.
And the number one customer experience call center trend for 2017 is…available on Michael Becker’s original article found here!
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
Top 5 Contact Center Trends for 2017 – Michael Becker
If you’re interested in outsourcing with a call center, we can help at no charge!
Outsource Consultants are call center experts with over 25 years of outsourcing industry experience that have spent thousands of hours vetting and analyzing the strengths and specializations of the industry-leading outsource call center vendors. If you’re considering call center outsourcing, simply call 888-766-4482 or request a free call center cost proposal today and we’ll help you find the solution that best fits your exact requirements.
