WHY CONTACT CENTRES ARE THE
NEW ENGAGEMENT CENTRES
Contact centres are usually the first responders for your customers
- the most likely to hear when something’s not right, the ones
expected to quickly solve problems, all with a personal, reassuring
response that instils customer confidence in your company.
Keeping up with the
‘empowered customer’
Achieving all this is a tall order to be sure, but
contact centres everywhere are facing
customers that are empowered like never
before. Today’s “always on” consumers expect
instant, seamless access to information across
all channels and on whatever platform suits
them at any given moment. When they actually
do decide to contact a company agent - by
phone, email, chat, Tweet, or text - it’s likely
because they can go no further on their own
and require personalised results and expertise
from people who are moving as fast as they are.
All of which means contact centres are in need
of the most accurate, relevant and timely
information from across the whole organisation
for each customer. In fact just as this digital
revolution is emboldening customers, it’s also
enabling smart companies to start transforming
their contact centres with technology, too.
“They’re the people that customers call when it’s
something that’s not simple,” says Heide. “We
need to get away from the thinking that contact
centre people aren’t very qualified or are
outsourced and start considering the long term.
You have to increasingly turn to accomplished
communicators and foster a culture of engaging
with your customers. But you also have to give
ISSUE SEVENTEEN • NOVEMBER 2014
them the right tools - to have everything the
customer has, in real time.”
Solutions for better data sharing
and staff empowerment
Among those tools: technology that can better
share and analyse customer data in order to put
those accessing it on equal footing with clients
on any number of platforms. These software
systems, known as customer engagement
platforms, integrate information from across the
entire business to deliver a full picture of any
given customer’s r [][ۜ