How a Collaborative Contact Center Delivers Better Business Outcomes
As a customer, you can tell when a contact center agent is reading from a script. Even worse, it becomes obvious that the agent is completely lost when circumstances require them to deviate from the script and adapt to the situation at hand.
The obvious risk of an overly scripted contact center is lost business due to a bad customer experience. A 2018 PwC survey found that nearly 60 percent of customers will walk away after several bad experiences, even if they love the company or product. Seventeen percent will leave after just one bad experience. Nearly half (46 percent) will abandon a brand if employees don’t seem knowledgeable.
The problem is, many contact centers follow a scripted approach and even reward agents for sticking to the script. Agents who use approved greetings, apologize at the right time, thank the customer, and check the rest of the boxes as laid out in the script are considered top performers.
However, modern self-service solutions make it easy for customers to obtain basic information. In other words, automation can handle many of the same tasks as an agent relying on a script. If someone is skipping self-service and getting in touch with a contact center, there’s a good chance they have an issue that can’t be resolved by a scripted response.
Benefits of Contact Center Collaboration
Research shows contact center agents who have the tools to collaborate produce better outcomes. According to a 2018 Aberdeen study, organizations that provide agents with collaboration tools saw a 68 percent increase in profit margins. A whopping 98 percent improved customer retention rates and 25 percent saw a decrease in agent turnover.
Unlike a contact center that focuses on scripted responses, a collaborative contact center can provide real-time support and answers when customers need them most. Collaboration tools provide agents with on-demand voice or chat access to colleagues and subject-matter experts outside the contact center who might be better-equipped to help the customer. In some cases, the customer can communicate directly with the expert. This leads to better retention, especially with at-risk customers, and closer relationships between the organization and its customers.
Contact center agents who have access to collaboration tools also tend to be more engaged and more likely to go the extra mile to help the customer. Because these agents tend to stay longer, the entire contact center team benefits from their experience and knowledge, which leads to better performance and productivity, fewer errors, greater efficiency, and higher satisfaction for both customers and agents.
Cisco Webex Contact Center
Ian Jackson, Design Engineer, Cerium Networks
Cisco Webex Contact Center (WCC) was developed to deliver an exceptional customer experience every time. It incorporates audio and video devices and headsets, cloud calling, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and more to create a truly unified contact center platform. “Predictive analytics is an essential component of Webex Contact Center,” says Ian Jackson, Design Enginner. “The more information that Webex Contact Center can gather, the better it can match customers with qualified agents. If you have a customer calling in for support on a specific product, you can tell Webex Contact Center to match the customer up with the agent with the most product expertise.”
Built-in voice and chat tools enable agents to seamlessly collaborate with other agents, managers or subject matter experts to resolve complex customer issues, boost first contact resolution rates and keep customers happy.
Ian adds, “By keeping a history of a customer’s interactions, you can reliably get them where they need to go faster. All of this can be via voice, chat, email, etc., to create a truly omnichannel journey, thus increasing the first contact resolution rate.”
If your contact center is relying on scripts, the agent’s job is more difficult, customer issues are less likely to be resolved, and the contact center probably isn’t delivering as much business value as it should. Let us show you how Cisco Webex Contact Center addresses these and other issues by empowering agents with modern collaboration tools.
