What Cloud-based contact centres will mean for customer satisfaction. What Cloud-based contact centres will mean for customer satisfaction

Transcription

1 What Cloud-based contact centres will mean for customer satisfaction

2 Much has been written about the business benefits of moving the contact centre to the Cloud but how does this transition translate into benefits to your customer? The shift from traditional on-premise contact centres to Cloud-based infrastructure is rapidly gathering pace, as more companies are realising the need for virtual, multichannel, scalable and flexible servicing infrastructures. According to a report by DMG Consulting LLC, the Cloud-based contact centre infrastructure market has grown significantly over the last few years, and will continue to do so, predicting that call centre seats in the Cloud will increase by 20% in 2015, 18% in 2016 and 2017, and 16% in Although the percentages are expected to decrease, the number of new contact centre infrastructure seats is expected to grow every year, and DMG claims that the market has actually never been stronger, as solutions become more mainstream and intense competition drives innovation. Indeed, a report published last year by Research and Markets revealed that the Cloud-based contact centre market is expected to increase from $4.15 billion in 2014 to $10.9 billion by James Glasspool, director of strategic marketing at VoltDelta International, believes there are a number of reasons behind this transition to Cloudbased infrastructure, including the growth in ecommerce and the need to rethink customer journeys, as well as the need for call centres to cover other channels. It s very hard to cover all the channels if you re building these systems yourself on-premise and connecting up different supplier systems, so a big factor is that Cloud suppliers have done most of the leg work for a customer. Moving to the Cloud can also enable brands to reduce costs and headcount, as well as scale services up or down, he adds.

3 It can be expensive to have lots of operational people supporting your voicebased call centre; the complexity leads to the need for more people on site, and suddenly you have an army of people supporting a technology, when in theory you could just jump to the Cloud. Also, in these capital-constrained times, people don t have to make a capital justification - they can buy a service, which is flexible, and can, for example, get a whole system to cover a peak trading season, depending on the business, and scale up and down. Other reasons for the shift include rapid deployment, and the flexibility of enabling agents to work from anywhere, says Glasspool. It also gives businesses the opportunity to re-imagine the contact centre and service side. You can for example, start thinking about who is in the contact centre. With Cloud, you can add remote staff, such as those in branch offices, experts on call, or other people around the business, who could log in and assist when you have peaks, and so on, he remarks. So suddenly it s not a separate building where the contact centre is - you can actually re-imagine your business, how you engage with customers, how you staff peaks, and how you get experts into a call. Other benefits of Cloud infrastructure include enabling brands to future proof systems through ongoing updates to the contact centre service, as well as site consolidation, says Glasspool. Many organisations struggle with legacy systems from multiple vendors when they reach the end of life stage, he adds. A Cloud service supporting virtual contact centres can consolidate all sites under the umbrella of a single system, utilising IP, and, if necessary, normal telephony as the lowest common denominator. The customer impact Yet whilst the advantages of Cloud-based contact centres for the business are clear, how do the customers actually benefit? The customer will realise better innovation, quicker changes to shifting customer preferences, and a more personalised experience, remarks Kate Leggett, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research. This is because Cloud technology allows brands to implement changes at a faster rate than on-premise solutions. These innovations will help satisfy the customer during their engagement with contact centres, therefore increasing loyalty.

4 Cloud-based solutions can also free businesses from worrying about the operational side of the technology, enabling them to focus on improving customer experiences and reducing customer effort. Once you re using Cloud-based contact centres, much of the operational leg work and decision-making is done for you, comments Glasspool. It therefore frees you up to concentrate on your end customer experience and what service you are actually delivering, rather than worrying about how you deliver it. Moving to the Cloud also gives brands the opportunity to look at the systems that the agent is using to support the customer service, he adds. Typically a Cloud contact centre will come ready-integrated with some of the leading CRM systems, so it makes it much easier to implement a 360-degree view of the customer. Traditionally, that was quite hard to do. So if you can pick that up, the contact agent can see all this and perhaps get to the route of things a bit quicker. Glasspool says that, with a Cloud contact centre in place, customers can be more easily served across multiple channels. Customers are able to use modern forms of communication, in addition to the phone, such as web chat, Twitter and Facebook, as well as and SMS, he remarks. The channels can also be integrated in so that, for example, when a customer phones in, they won t have to re-explain an they sent, so the customer should see a better delivery of service. Also, when they make contact, the agent is well informed and will have their past interaction history available to them, on all channels, and will see what the last agent did. Further customer factors According to Glasspool, a Cloud-based multichannel contact centre should also enable customers to experience the following: If the agent needs assistance, they can do this in real time and conference in an expert to assist and resolve an issue or reassure a customer Customers get a confirmatory communication after an interaction so reducing further contact as they see that what the agent promised has been actioned Availability: Cloud should enable the brand to offer a 24/7 service after all the brand s website is 24/7, so why not the customer service element? Outbound calls/sms/ s/mailings are made based on the customer s selected preferences, and all channels of the brand use this information.

5 It is about delivering the appropriate service for the customer, rather than a bland, generic, one-size-fits-all, remarks Glasspool. For the customer, they should definitely notice a better experience in customer satisfaction, as well as lower customer effort, in terms of the fact that all of their communication is captured in one place. Drew Kraus, research VP at Gartner, stresses that Cloud doesn t automatically mean better service it all depends on what a business does with the technology. However, because Cloud reduces much of the upfront costs, it enables companies to provide differentiated customer service, he adds. Because more companies can now afford more advanced capabilities using Cloud, rather than having to buy whole systems upfront, they have been able to improve customer satisfaction, he says. So by making advanced customer service functionality more affordable, consumers have a better chance of getting more personalised and effective treatment. Driving up the metrics As highlighted above, Cloud-based contact centres are therefore able to shift the dials on some of the more traditional measurements that call centre managers monitor, such as average handle time, cost per call and contact abandon rates, but more importantly to drive up the customer satisfaction measures (CSAT). And while it is difficult to measure its impact on Net Promoter Score (NPS) because of the sheer number of variables involved, there is also anecdotal evidence that Cloud contact centres can play a big part in driving up NPS. Adopting multichannel Cloud will help to improve NPS and customer satisfaction, adds Glasspool, because it allows customers to access services more easily, and enables businesses to use the channels where their customers are - and effectively engage with them - as well as offer extended hours or 24/7. In addition, rather than passing a customer around departments or promising to get back to them, experts from within the brand can be more easily conferenced in to assist, leading to first call resolution, he says. Once brands are in the Cloud, they have the ability, across all the different channels, to record what the customer experience actually is, feed that back directly, and use it to either inform how they route it, or to improve how they deliver the service. Most Cloud infrastructures will include an insight capability to do that.

6 Next steps and tips For those considering a move to Cloud-based contact centres, Glasspool advises brands to use it as a chance to focus on the customer journey. It is a good opportunity to re-imagine the customer experience; start from the customer journey, across your different businesses, and see where they need support and where they need to engage with the organisation. This means you can really change the way you operate. You can have more flexible working within the organisation and you can use home workers for peaks etc. You could also use it to re-fresh your CRM system to link in with the different channels. When choosing the right Cloud supplier for your needs, Glasspool recommends the following: Ensure that your supplier is able to track all conversations and interactions, and link these directly to the customer record for a joinedup, 360-degree view of the customer. Ensure that your supplier is able to allow you to easily spilt and manage your traffic between an insourced and outsourced call centre to give the organisation flexibility for the future (and with the key management information also split to allow for detailed service monitoring and management). Ensure that the supplier is able to vary the routing decisions based on a look-up of the customer record to enable customer segmentation or even personalised routing, for example, based on actual customer value or customer lifetime value estimate. Look for a supplier that you can properly engage with, that will take the time to understand your requirements and ensure these are delivered out of the Cloud. So what does the future hold for Cloud-based contact centres? Glasspool sees more providers offering not just their own solutions, but integrated third-party solutions too, meaning even more of the wider contact centre ecosystem will be delivered from the Cloud. Around the core of what a contact centre needs to do and deliver, there are quite a few ancillary systems, and I see more of those being offered from one vendor to another. With workforce management, performance management, analytics and so on, some of the other elements of the contact centre will get delivered from the Cloud, around a pre-integrated solution. He also believes we will see the use of more customer-centric measurements away from time and efficiency measures - as well as the use of biometrics to lower customer effort scores. As it becomes harder for brands to differentiate their products, many are trying to differentiate themselves with good customer service, in the broader sense, he adds. Delivering and monitoring that, and having that engagement with the customer in a very efficient manner, is why we will see more Cloud contact centres being developed.