There’s no denying that customer support is changing, and that businesses are finding themselves under more pressure than ever to evolve, grow, and separate themselves from their competitors. Today’s saturated market has created unlimited choices for consumers, resulting in less product differentiation and the need for higher emphasis on the overall brand experience.
In fact, according to
Salesforce’s 2019 State of Service Report, 80% of customers now consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products. This shift has had big impacts on business growth.
Forrester shows that companies delivering a great customer experience saw a 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), whereas companies providing a poor customer experience delivered just 3% CAGR over the same period.
The reality is, lots of tools and technologies out there can help support leaders transform their contact centers. However, in order to truly do so, support organizations must find innovative ways not only to connect with their customers and resolve issues faster, but also to show support’s impact, value, and potential across the entire enterprise.
Below are three critical technology strategies customer support and customer experience leaders must take into consideration when looking to transform their contact centers digitally.
- Invest in the Cloud — Companies are investing in cloud-native technologies at a faster rate than ever before. Customer support is no different. A contact center-as-a-service, or CCaaS, platform arms organizations with a support model that not only allows them to become more agile and scalable, but also can help streamline operations, reduce overhead, and provide more consistent service to customers. Cloud-native CCaaS platforms provide more integrations, connections, and add-ons that not only can significantly enhance the customer experience today, but keep companies ready for the next wave of technological advances that will impact customer support.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): Think Beyond Chatbots — AI is no longer the technology of the future, but the technology of today. However, the perception persists that AI predominantly means chatbots. Yes, AI’s role in increasing the efficiency and popularity of chatbots can’t be denied, and a well-tuned chatbot can serve a critical function in ushering in a better experience for customers. But AI can do so much more. For example, natural language processing and conversational AI capabilities can be put to use in identifying intent with the aim of optimizing routing and better directing customers through the support experience.
- Expand Your Ecosystem — We traditionally think of customer support as the interaction between a support agent and a customer. However, it goes much deeper than that. Integrating your contact center with technologies such as CRM platforms, workforce management tools, and quality management solutions allow support teams to better collect and surface data in real-time, strategically staff their call centers in order to maximize efficiency while reducing costs, and train and track agent performance. An expanded contact center ecosystem not only allows for a more efficient and better connected call center, it can also help break down barriers between customer support and other parts of an organization. Having access to real-time customer feedback, insights, and sentiment can be extremely useful for teams such as product, marketing, and sales.
Transformation Starts with Technology
The reality is, your contact center is only as good as the technology you deploy. A cloud-native contact center solution infused with new and emerging technology and connected into a larger ecosystem can empower agents, support leaders, and their customers with the necessary context, data, and operating systems needed to digitally transform the support experience and display customer support’s value, impact, and potential across the entire enterprise.
