How do you ensure seamless customer experience(CX) from start to finish to your digital savvy customers that are demanding in terms of quick response? Are you using the right communication channels to interact with them irrespective of their locations? If your mind is blank on answering these questions, then you need to deliver refined service and improved customer experience to register positive business outcomes.
Contact center trends offer you a futuristic look on how digital conversion and artificial intelligence(AI) can play a major contributing role in providing optimal customer service to your customers.Let’s find out what major contact center trends will enhance CX and help you gain an advantage over your competitors. In this blog, we’ll learn about the top 5 trends for contact centers in 2021 that will allow you to stay ahead of the curve in the upcoming year.
There’s hardly any industry that’s untouched with the influence of Cloud technology. Contact centers are no different. As per the Global Contact Center Survey Report 2019, Deloitte, 55% of the business leaders believe in switching to cloud contact center solutions and 45% of business owners do not intend to move to cloud in next 2 yrs. One of the main reasons behind this delay is that there’s already huge investments made by them in on-premise assets which they plan to use until they fully depreciate. Another reason that restricts leaders from moving to advanced cloud contact systems is the lingering data privacy concerns. For those who think cloud solutions lack in offering privacy while maintaining customer data, they are wrong. Your data is safe in the cloud. It’s better to keep your data on cloud than keeping it on-site through the use of professional data centers.
Today, many companies are widening their IT infrastructure spending by applying cloud call center platforms wherein remote agents interact with consumers in the same manner they interact in location-based contact centers. You can access the innovative call center system anytime anywhere to complete your tasks.
Artificial Intelligence has a significant impact on the working of contact centers. Many modern contact centers are already taking advantage of AI to improve performance and increase customer satisfaction. As we look forward to 2021, AI will continue to innovate with frantic speed and will continue to automate menial tasks or assist call center agents to improve their performance and productivity. With AI, your call center agents will be able to provide exceptional customer service in a faster and smarter way. Gartner research shows that 55% of the established brands have already invested in the potential of AI or are soon going to invest by year end.
Omni channel communication support is what today’s modern customers want. Nowadays, they prefer to reach you via multiple platforms like social media, chats, calls, SMS messages or even video calls. Many modern businesses are turning to tools like AI powered chatbots and digital assistants to offer personalized customer service and therefore drive better business results.
The key to win customer hearts is to provide them personalised and consistent experience to their preferred mode of communication. That’s how established brands distinguish themselves from their competitors by seamlessly connecting with their customers across all communication channels. When you give the freedom to your customers to choose how and when they want to communicate, you are able to boost customer experience and maintain high retention rates.
You need omnichannel support to ensure your customers don’t have to repeat themselves whenever there is a switch between agents or communication channels. When you have omnichannel support, you are able to see a complete picture of your customer’s journey, so you can quickly pick up where the other agent left off.
In 2021, we will witness an increase in the number of online self service resources like chatbots and web portals. Chatbots are one of the most popular and useful self service solutions that answer customer questions, route calls, and deal with triage issues. Studies show that companies who rely on chatbots are highly likely to report improvement in resolution times and customer satisfaction. This way, chatbots increase your customer support team’s efficiency. That’s why many contact center leaders plan to increase their IT investment in self automation in the upcoming year. Also, if you invest in self service automation tools, you will end up getting reduced call queues, and saving agents’ time which will help you to devote time in solving complex problems. You will also get the benefit of reduced call volumes, increased first-time resolutions, and minimized customer service cost if you associate FAQ pages, video tutorials, and troubleshooting pages with customer issues.
Many rational business owners are already leveraging real-time analytics to boost customer conversations and other business metrics. With the help of complex data algorithms and machine learning, analytics can help you know more about your customers than ever before.
By using analytics data, you will be able to improve customer satisfaction rates and deliver customer experience beyond their expectations.
Top 5 Contact center trends show that customer satisfaction is going to be the number one priority for the organizations. You need to equip your agents with AI tools, real time analytics, and self service automation tools to offer stellar communication experience to your customers.