Call Center Digital Transformation
Over the past decades, most people have been contacting Customer Care services by telephone. Just 10 years ago, smartphones were already popular, but it was rare for anyone to use email to contact a company to ask a question or anything that they might need.
The above reality was changing rapidly, as we were proceeding to the Digital Age. In 2015, digital channels (email, webchat, social media, and self-service channels) were thought that would overtake phone services by this year. But these new capabilities don't come cheaply. For many organizations, contact centers are a major expense. And while they have more potential than ever to maintain and increase customer loyalty, they also have become large and growing cost centers.
Digital technology now occupies every aspect of our lives, and as products and services incorporate digital technologies, they become more complex. Customers need more support to use these digitally enhanced products and services to their full potential. And now that those products can be interconnected, contact centers can be proactive, foreseeing and preventing customer problems from occurring. This will turn such contact centers into a perfect platform for growing customer loyalty.
The digital transformation in our lives can be felt in the smallest of everyday actions like using your cell phone to the most advanced examples of transmitting information from outer space. But what might be the most important aspect of digitization is yet to be implemented: getting all your digital channels and inputs to speak in one unified digital language. The impact of a digital call center will be immeasurable in the lives of your customers as to when we combine the ability to harness communication skills with AI and Deep Learning, we gain access to information systems with unparalleled abilities.
Customer satisfaction is a one-way street, hence all the tools need to be in place for this to be achieved in the best possible way. Customer support through digital channels such as email, chat, text (SMS), social media must work flawlessly.
Once this is implemented correctly and achieved, there are no limits to what the Call Centre can offer as a unique customer opportunity and solution.
How to achieve Digital Competency in a Call Center
The agent must be able to comprehend and simultaneously understand all the Digital Channels available in order to enhance in the best possible and integrated way the customer experience, but let’s not ever forget that the human factor should still play a significant role.
Although much of the technology that is powering the digital revolution is extraordinary, it is still in an early stage. That’s not to say that it isn’t mature enough to use – quite the opposite is true – but it will continue to evolve and improve.
Furthermore, a digitally competent agent should have:
- Digital Project Management Knowledge and skills
- Digital Marketing Knowledge and skills (Analytics Tools, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, UX)
- Data Science & Data Analytics Knowledge and skills
- For the near future, actual human support agents still need to play a role in the digital call center because even the most intelligent FAQ section can’t solve every problem.
All the data that keep being collected and analyzed are providing agents with more and more relevant information. This leads to more efficiency, better solutions, and more opportunities for meaningful engagement, all of which ultimately lead to increased customer loyalty. Digitizing customer experience is the way forward!
