Call centre industry trends can help you discover new ways of working, keep a watchful eye and keep up to date with the new rules of the game when it comes to customer relationship management. Indeed, in recent years, contact centres have seen their customer experience, technological innovation and overall resilience tested like never before.
Today, contact centres need to take a step back and accept that the evolution of their services must be constant to support every strategic decision and maintain a competitive, customer-focused offering.
The digital experience is at the heart of customer relations
Unsurprisingly, customers are more dependent than ever on the internet and online marketing channels. This also means that they expect your company to meet them there to optimise customer relationship management.
Contact centres that previously resisted the transition to digital experiences were forced to take the plunge during the first year of the pandemic.
These years have been marked by the continued migration of contact centres to the cloud. This is because cloud-based technology is more secure than ever and easily adapts to growing businesses. This technology is perfectly suited to remote or hybrid contact centres where agents work from home. The cloud can also support omnichannel strategy, enabling businesses to connect with their users across their preferred channels.
Of course, digital contact centre technology is not the only option available.
Here are the innovations and services you might want to invest in this year to manage your customer relationships effectively:
- Voice reminders: Offer callers a call-back option instead of keeping them waiting. This helps smooth out call peaks and dramatically improves your customers’ experience!
- Visual Interactive Voice Response: This is a simple but powerful add-on for your website that allows customers to schedule a callback from a contact centre agent at a time of their choosing.
- Chatbots: While they can’t replace real human interaction, chatbots can automate tedious tasks for your contact centre agents, allowing them to focus on service excellence.
Customer relationship management based on convenience and immediacy
The COVID-19 pandemic has had many repercussions on consumer behaviour and customer relationship management. The most notable impacts relate primarily to the increased demand for convenience and customer expectations in terms of ease of service.
Customers can order everything they need directly at the touch of a button. There are now moree-commerce delivery options and services than ever before. Customers have become dependent on e-commerce sites that are able to fulfil and deliver orders in just a few days.
Today’s e-tailers have never had a greater need for high-performance, modern contact centres.
In recent years, the relentless pursuit of convenience has resulted in impatient and more demanding customers. Customers will always pay more for good customer service, but in return they will demand that the service they receive is convenient and comfortable. Indeed, customers expect companies to intervene and offer products and services that are both fast and accessible. Otherwise, they will not hesitate to change supplier.
Contact centres must not make the mistake of ignoring this trend. Customer service is now recognised as the main driver of revenue, alongside sales and marketing. In other words, customer loyalty has a direct impact on your company’s revenues. To maintain their loyalty, your contact centre needs to offer customers fast solutions and exceptional experiences.
That said, a contact centre is a busy place. If inbound calls are plentiful and staff are inefficient, it becomes difficult for agents to deliver quality experiences.
Omnichannel support remains one of the best ways to help your customers, whatever their preferred channel. In 2022, a high-performing call centre must enable you to easily escalate customers on any digital channel (social media, email, chat support) to the voice channel.
The hybrid model is the new way of working in contact centres
Hybrid working refers to the idea of returning to the office after working from home at least one day a week, but also spending time working remotely. It may come as a surprise, but even before the pandemic, a hybrid or work-at-home model was preferred by the vast majority of workers, and contact centres are no exception.
Hybrid contact centres will become the norm by 2022.
Many companies have realised the value of flexible working arrangements and have seized the opportunity created by the pandemic to implement this radical but necessary change.
This hybrid way of working makes contact centre agents more engaged, and improves customer satisfaction. It also reduces social isolation and contributes to work/life balance.
On the other hand, this new vision of work allows companies to save on costs thanks to smaller office spaces and, as a result, lower rent and management costs.
The introduction of the hybrid model has led many to conclude that remote working will become the new industry norm, although it cannot be denied that there is still an interest in the contact centre agent community to work in the office.
If you still have doubts about choosing your new contact centre, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Advancia Teleservices is here to guide you and answer all your questions. We are one of the most important call centres in Tunisia, because we place excellence in customer relations as one of our main objectives ?