After garnering great reviews with CX Memories in India, this month we took the idea to Malaysia in the recently concluded Contact Centers Asia 2017 conference. To put it in minimum words, monumental shifts have happened in terms of customer experience in Malaysia and the APAC region at large.
The first most noticeable aspect of the conference this year was that it was entirely ruled by people from operations and customer experience leaders, who discussed operational efficiency of contact centers, workforce management, customer retention, and other topics.
Ameyo chose to present an ‘outside-in’ messaging approach at the event – ‘Going beyond customer service KPIs and creating customer experience memories‘. This idea was received very positively, which was absolutely palpable among the audience.
With the predominance of digital platforms such as chat and social media in contact centers and cloud based call center solutions gaining preference in the market, the relevance of voice in contact centers has reduced drastically. This fear was pretty evident among contact center leaders at the event.
Operations – Not Siloed Anymore!
Yesteryears would bear testimony of the fact that operations were just another spoke on the wheel, whose job is to only support business. However, things have changed radically, with great customer experience becoming the key differentiator for customers to choose a brand over another. Consequently, operations have been able to swiftly inch towards the management table.
In recent times, its job is far more prominent that just to support a business. So much so, that now it probably has the maximum impact on a business. Therefore, the decision of tools processes seems to be firmly placed with operations, while IT will aid as a partner.
Start with Customer Experience, and then focus on the Technology
Remember the time when Steve Jobs said that – brands have to start with customer experience and work backwards to the technology. Surely, the tech legend had made this statement beyond its time. However, this has become a stark reality at this juncture. This reflected in the presentations of a significant number of speakers at Contact Centers Asia 2017.
Nevertheless, it is safe to say that businesses are moving on to the next level of customer experience, which is to build awe-inspiring CX Memories, which results in deep admiration from customers. Thus, brands need to think of the customer experience goals and then develop the technology, based on customers’ standpoint.
More Agent Empowerment = More Customer Delight!
With the ascendency of Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics, agents are be able to provide supreme tailored products/services, exclusively based on customers’ needs and thereby, resulting in better workflow and resource management.
44% of online consumers term that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase, is one of the most important features any website can offer. This is because Live Chat offer very less or negligible wait time, compared to other modes of communication. Moreover, it leaves open the option for agents and customers to multitask.
This fact reflected in the words of Cedric Blum from Iflix, who said – “From the discussions we all had around Live Chat channels, I think everybody is clearly interested for many reasons , and the good news is that productivity is not the main reason. Ease of access for customers, along with ease of handling for customer agents were the two main drivers, so customer and employee experience is definitely king.”
Sure, we have artificial intelligence and chatbots that have entered the fray of contact centers. However, gaining true customer delight and achieving great CX memories go hand in hand with agent interactions, because customers are extremely influenced by emotional experiences that they have with brands these days.
Hence, you can be confident that empowering agents with more than needed information and technology will absolutely result in customer delight.
During my presentation at the conference I asked the audience – the first time the agent takes a decision and makes a mistake what should one do? Most people mentioned that we should guide and correct it. However, by far the best answer that I got was that we should appreciate the agents because if they stop taking decisions, they would be replaced by machines. 🙂
