Contact centres are taking customer service to the next level with high-tech solutions and improved user experiences. By leveraging advanced technologies, like AI and automation, companies can now revolutionise how they interact with their customers daily. With such modern capabilities at their disposal, businesses are empowered to provide faster resolutions in an increasingly connected world. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, contact centres have accelerated remarkably, from the work from home (WFH) lifestyle, to customer service provided by smart chatbots. Such changes have created a positive collaboration experience among contact centre agents, as well as their customers.

Challenges faced in contact centres

The key to success in contact centres lies in providing employees with the right tools and resources they need to perform at their best. Without such support, staff members can easily become overwhelmed leading them to provide mediocre service – ultimately resulting in decreased customer satisfaction levels. 

Typical challenges being experienced in contact centres include low customer satisfaction, employees not being prioritised, access to information, the complexity of tools being used by human agents, long waiting times and call times that are an average of 30 minutes each, as well as a plethora of incoming calls – all of which result in a struggle to meet customers’ needs. 

While contact centres had to meet the challenges of an influx in customers as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this meant not only more business but also the catalyst to improve contact centres.

Was the pandemic the best or the worst time for contact centres?

One of the biggest shifts during the pandemic was converting to a work from home lifestyle. This also applied to contact centre agents, ultimately changing the nature of contact centres. The benefits of the WFH model include higher agent satisfaction and lower turnover, reduced operating costs, improved work-life balance, higher employment rate. The challenges, however, consist of higher security risks, lower bandwidth reliability, difficulties during onboarding of new employees, and overall technology reliability. Despite the challenges that have come with the WFH model, it is here to stay.    

The pandemic played a pivotal role in contact centres with the implementation of chatbots. Gartner predicts that by 2027 chatbots will become the primary channel for customers. The use of chatbots eliminates the issues of waiting for contact centre agents, obtaining answers for mundane questions, and its 24/7 service. Despite the increasing prevalence of chatbots for customer interaction, some customers still prefer receiving service face to face for more complex interactions, like complaints.

“Customer interactions delivered through the native apps on a smartphone lets companies deliver innovation sooner without the traditionally long application development timeframes,” says Barry Fialkov, Collaboration Practice Lead at Outcomex. 

Outcomex continues to focus on providing the best collaboration solutions with Cisco technology, helping contact centres and customers alike. The result is that customer satisfaction rates have been improved drastically, coupled with efficiency and accuracy of each centre. This is what drives Outcomex and Cisco to continuously innovate the industry.