5 digital customer experience trends driving the future of contact centres
In recent years, our world has become increasingly digital. Many of us now shop, research products and interact with customer support through digital channels. In 2020 alone, the APAC region saw?four years’ worth of change ?in customer experience (CX) between January and July.
As our day-to-day interactions have changed, digital transformation within contact centres has become imperative.
Customers expect seamless, personalised experiences every time they interact with a business. To keep up with these changing expectations, you must prioritise digital transformation to continue improving and delivering CX that places you ahead of your competitors.
The following five trends have already begun transforming contact centres and will define the future of CX.
Automation will support your CX initiatives
Automation in contact centres takes many shapes. You might automate manual processes, deploy chatbots, send emails or texts to many customers, etc. The point is that each of these will deliver a boost to CX initiatives by reducing the time agents spend on calls or manually updating data.
Automation can be your tool for creating operational efficiencies by routing calls or assigning email-based queries to agents. By doing this, your contact centre can operate more efficiently and provide better CX.
Automation can also help to improve the quality of customer service by providing agents with the ability to access information about customers quickly. As a result, they will spend less time on each call and can improve the quality of their service.
Finally, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can automate contact centre operations by taking on simple, repetitive tasks, allowing agents to focus on complex tasks and provide a better customer experience.
Chatbots will guide customers
Chatbots take the strain off your agents by assisting customers with straightforward queries and frequently asked questions. They also enable you to provide twenty-four hour support for basic queries, so a customer wanting to resolve a minor issue does not have to wait until business hours.
Chatbots can improve CX by providing a more efficient way to handle customer queries. If your contact centre leverages?Interactive Voice Response (IVR) , you might use that to direct customers to chatbots instead of speaking with a human agent.?
When agents have a shorter call queue, they can spend more time with customers with complex issues, reducing the chances of them becoming stressed and burned out. However, it is essential to remember that chatbots do not replace human agents. If someone has a query that a chatbot cannot help them with, the bot must be able to gauge this and help the customer get in contact with a human agent.
Natural Language Processing will refine interactions
Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) where computers attempt to understand human language and respond in a way that is natural for humans. NLP is what allows chatbots and digital assistants to understand the user’s intent and provide a helpful response.
NLP analyses two types of interactions:
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As the role of AI and Machine Learning (ML) in contact centres increases, NLP will be the key to delivering more human interactions from chatbots and improving CX provided by agents. We will see more and more chatbots and digital assistants that can easily handle complex customer queries as NLP evolves. In addition, NLP-enabled chatbots and digital assistants can provide personalised recommendations and suggestions based on the customer’s preferences and past interactions.
Hyper-personalisation will tailor CX
You would be familiar with simple personalisation techniques: an email about the remaining items in someone’s cart, a weekly newsletter delivered to a specific customer segment, all with the recipient’s first name added. You must go beyond this to achieve CX excellence and focus on delivering hyper-personalisation.
Hyper-personalised CX is about delivering content or sending messages to individual customers using real-time data and AI. Rather than viewing your customers as segments, you need to view them as individuals.
Hyper-personalisation delivers many benefits. By understanding each customer’s individual preferences, needs and wants, you can provide a tailored service that leads to improved CX. As a result, you will likely see increased customer loyalty and higher satisfaction levels.
There are numerous ways to implement hyper-personalisation, but one of the most effective is data and analytics. By analysing customer data, you can gain valuable insights into customer behaviour to inform decisions about the communications they receive from you.
While hyper-personalisation requires some investment in time and resources, the benefits far outweigh the costs. For businesses looking to improve their customer experience, hyper-personalisation is an essential strategy.
Human interaction will keep customers coming back
While technology such as chatbots, AI, ML and NLP will lead contact centre innovation in the coming years, the human touch will continue to be an important aspect of contact centres. There are only so many issues that machines can solve. We need people to demonstrate empathy and apply critical thinking to complex problems when customers feel angry, worried or vulnerable.
Finding the right balance between human agents and automation in your contact centre is essential. If you have too much automation, you may not be able to provide the level of customer service that your customers expect. On the other hand, if you have too many human agents, you may not be able to achieve the efficiency gains that automation can provide.?
The key is to find the right mix of human agents and automation for your contact centre. If you are unsure where to start, speak to a contact centre expert who can help you find the right balance.
Premier Contact Point delivers platforms for enhancing CX
Our cloud?contact centre solution ?delivers aims to improve digital CX and make life easier for your agents. We provide affordable, innovative features, such as visual IVR, CRM integration, self-service options and omnichannel capabilities.
You can get in touch with us to?book a demo ?of our cloud contact centre solution.