Disrupting the 2020 contact center...9 Disrupting the 2020 Contact Center: CultureThink of a...

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Disrupting the 2020 contact center

© 2019 Qualtrics LLC

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Table of Contents Enter the new era of contact centers

It’s time to re-think the role of the contact center

Align your metrics to drive culture change

Why customer lifetime value can help change perspectives

Competencies21

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Is your contact center set up to deliver on the customer experience?

Break down channel silos to deliver on customer expectations

Invest in multi-skilling agents to deliver on customer expectations

Ditch the script and embrace agent autonomy and personalization

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New technology is the enabler for the 2020 contact center

Consolidate your tech stack to break down silos

Deep, actionable insights from your customers

Connected X- and O-Data

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Enter the new era of contact centers

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Disrupting the 2020 Contact Center: Culture

The way businesses compete and win in the Experience Economy has changed. As

experiences continue to grow faster than goods and services as a proportion of the

economy, the organizations that rise to the top are differentiating themselves based on the

experiences they create and deliver.

In customer experience, huge investment has been placed in experiences like eCommerce

and retail stores, but there’s one key experience many organizations continue to ignore -

the contact center.

Seen by many as a service, not an experience, it’s regarded by most leadership teams as a

cost center. And for customers, it’s seen as primarily as a ‘task’ akin to paying ones taxes

rather than an experience.

Enter the new era of contact centers

75% of consumers see calling a contact center as a ‘task’ rather than an experience

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IT’S TIME TO RE-THINK THE CONTACT CENTER

Contact centers remain one of the most personal and important touchpoints in the

customer journey and represent a key point of experience differentiation that can help turn

customers into fans.

We recently ran a 4-month study into the current state of contact centers to identify how

experiences are designed and deployed, and how they could be re-engineered to provide

lasting value to the business as a key driver of the customer experience.

Based on the study, we’ve laid out a pathway for contact centers to move away from being

viewed solely as a cost center and start their journey along the XM Framework to deliver

differentiated experiences that drive value back to the bottom line.

+ 4 months + Interviews with contact center managers across several industries + 100 contact center agents + 2,000 consumers across 1000s of journeys

THE STUDY

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The XM Framework looks at 3 core areas where organizations need to focus:

+ Culture the mindset and culture that directly affects both customer and

business outcomes

+ Competency translating the strategy into tactics and actions through the practices

you deploy on the ground

+ Technology the conduit and force multiplier for the activities that affect everything from

employee efficiency to experience differentiation

In this section of the report, we’ll take a look at the culture of the contact center and

explore the mindset shift that needs to take place to re-imagine their role and set them up

as a key growth driver in the coming years.


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Think of a touchpoint where you have the opportunity to engage customers in 1:1

conversations, to hear directly from them what they like, dislike, and what they expect you

to do about it.

Welcome to the contact center

Contact centers should be at the top of every CX manager’s priority list. 78% of consumers

say a single contact center interaction has permanently changed how they feel about a brand

— both positively and negatively.

Brands that deliver world-class contact center experiences have an opportunity to turn

detractors into promoters, and customers into loyal fans.

But in the race to capitalize on the experience economy and move away from simply selling

goods and services to selling ‘experiences’, contact centers have largely been left behind.


78% of consumers say a single contact center interaction has changed how they feel about a brand

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NOT A GROWTH DRIVER, YET

Contact centers are notoriously expensive service channels with a variety of important

levers required for execution, and they are often viewed a sunk cost of doing business. As

such, their performance is largely judged based on their ability to drive efficiencies, with an

increasingly long list of performance metrics accounting for every agent’s time.

So when it comes to investing in improvements, they get in line behind other, more high-

profile channels like physical stores and eCommerce websites.

CONTACT CENTERS - AN EXPENSIVE SERVICE CHANNEL

Maintaining a contact center is an expensive business, so it’s not surprising that the

current metrics focus largely on cost efficiencies, not customer outcomes. Here are the

investments required to maintain a contact center’s operations:

+ Software (cloud or on-premise)

+ Physical infrastructure (office space,

desks, hardware)

+ Staffing (full-time agents, part-time

agents, managers)

+ Training (materials, trainers,

non-working time)

+ Customer knowledge base

(development, curation)

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It all comes down to mindset

Investing in retail stores and eCommerce sites is perceived as a cost to support sales, and

investing in the contact center is seen as a cost of supporting a service.

Give most leadership teams the choice, and they’d probably tell you they would rather not

have to have a call center and would prefer to focus their investments in customer support

via digital or self-help tools that are far less expensive to maintain.

It’s a short-sighted view that has left many contact centers managing on threadbare

budgets and unable to make the investments they need to deliver value back to

the bottom line.

Next we’ll look at some of the cultural elements to tackle to position your contact center to

meet the increasing customer expectations and start delivering real value back

to the business.


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The metrics you put in place to measure success are a key part of the culture you build

around parts of the organization, and one of the key reasons why the potential of contact

centers to deliver experiences remains largely untapped is that the metrics are skewed in

favor of costs, not outcomes.

Going back to our retail store example again, they’re typically evaluated on two fronts:

+ A financial contribution such as sales per sq foot

+ A cost metric such as cost per sq foot

Now think about the metrics your contact center uses. It’s usually one-dimensional, and

there are no prizes for guessing the dimension — cost!


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In our most recent study into contact centers, the following were the most commonly

tracked metrics in contact centers. Note how only the four in bold are customer-centric.

+ Customer satisfaction

+ Customer Effort Score

+ First call resolution

+ First contact resolution

+ Abandon rate

+ Avg Speed of Answer

+ Avg handle time

+ Avg transfer rate

+ Avg after-call time

+ Service level

+ Cost per contact

+ Inbound contacts per agent

+ Calls per agent

+ True call rate

+ Forecast accuracy

+ Avg occupancy rate

+ Avg utilization rate

+ Agent schedule adherence

+ Agent absenteeism

+ Agent turnover

+ IVR containment

+ Erlang Staffing Calculation

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The scales are clearly unbalanced. Take average handle time as an example – when contact

center agents are judged on this metric, they’re being judged on speed, not on quality. So

it’s in their interests to finish a call in the quickest possible time, with no expectation of

delivering a positive outcome to the customer.

But what if that metric was measured alongside something more customer-centric and

‘outcome oriented’ like Customer Lifetime Value? Your calls might take longer, but if they

lead to customers buying from the brand again and driving revenue back to the bottom line,

that increase in average handling time can be seen instead as a cost of sale.

Read more:

10 Bottom Line Results of Customer Experience Management

41% of contact center agents cited ‘being judged on over-simplistic metrics’ as one of the top things they hate about their jobs

https://www.qualtrics.com/ebooks-guides/10-bottom-line-results/


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We’ve seen already how the right metrics can drive a cultural change in the organization,

and perhaps the best metric to help achieve that in the contact center is Customer Lifetime

Value (CLV).

CLV is a measurement of how valuable a customer is to your organization across the whole

period of their relationship with you.

It helps you to understand the financial impact of your investments over a longer period

of time and, crucially, identify areas post-sale where you can increase the value of existing

customers as opposed to focusing your investments only in acquiring new ones.

Compared to other call center metrics, its value really lies in how it’s measured: dollars and

cents, pennies and pounds, etc. It speaks the language of the C-suite by demonstrating

impact to the bottom line, and helping contact center leaders to more effectively defend,

and even expand their capital and operational expenditure budgets.


GOING BEYOND A CALL-BY-CALL VIEW

One of the great benefits of CLV as a metric for contact centers is that it encourages you to

take a bird-eye view of the customer journey.

The ‘lifetime’ component is key. It’s not about this call that’s going on right now, or the issue

a customer is currently on the phone to you about — it’s about the longer-term relationship

with the customer.

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As such, it’s vital here that you also understand their other interactions, both before and

after picking up the phone.

Afterall, our latest research shows that 58% of people first seek support in digital channels,

switching later to the phone to complete the task. Understanding what emotions they’re

carrying into that call is essential - someone may have already tried to resolve the issue

online, in which case they want a speedy resolution; another person’s reason for calling

may be because their issue is complicated or sensitive, in which case a slower response is

likely to be more appropriate.

Here’s a few things you should ideally include in your measurement program to understand

the emotions driving your customers’ behavior:

Emotional delta include questions in your feedback program such as “Did this interaction

change how you feel about [COMPANY]?” followed by a vector question to understand if it

had a positive or negative impact.

Perceived time as we’ve seen, time is a relative measurement and is impacted by

everything from the complexity of the task to customer demographics. So look to include a

question like “Compared to what you were expecting, did this [INTERACTION TYPE]...” with

options for “Took more time than I expected,” “Took about the time I expected” and “Took

less time than I expected.”

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Reason for a call most contact center feedback programs ask customers the purpose of

their call. This is a misnomer as it simply captures the type of work being done (eg ‘closing

an account’). To understand the emotions customers carry into the call, asking the reason

for calling can draw out more actionable data such as ‘I called because I couldn’t complete

the task online’ and get to the root of any frustration.

Read more:

Designing a World-Class Digital Experience Program

https://www.qualtrics.com/ebooks-guides/world-class-digital-customer-experience-program/

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THE MILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION

The final, and perhaps most compelling, benefit to CLV is that it includes a monetary

element. Unlike CSAT and other softer metrics which tell you how someone feels about the

brand, CLV helps you demonstrate the impact on the bottom line.

CALL TIMES COST

CLV YEARLY REVENUE

+ 6% - $300,000

+ 12% + $3,000,000So your call times increased by 6%, costing you around $300,000 a year more to service

your customers? It’s small change if you can prove that the slower, more deliberate

approach to customer contact drives a 12% increase in CLV and an additional $3,000,000

in revenue a year.

Moving towards a set of metrics that include a customer and business value outcome is

the starting point for transforming how people see the contact center — when agents and

leadership teams alike can see the true value of the operation to the bottom line, it rapidly

changes the culture to one where experiences and the value they deliver become the

driving force behind your operations.

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Preparing for Customer Experience Design

part 1


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Disrupting the 2020 Contact Center: Competencies

The contact center remains largely untapped when it comes to competing on experiences

to drive customer spend and loyalty. Compared to other touchpoints such as digital and

in-store experiences, contact centers have a long way to go to transform themselves to

become a key growth driver.






THE STUDY

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From that study, we’ve identified 3 main areas where organizations can focus to re-imagine

the role of the contact center to move away from being a cost center to being a key

driver of growth:


business outcomes





In this section of the report, we’ll take a look at the competencies needed to reimagine the

contact center from breaking down channel silos to delivering better customer outcomes.


part 1


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Remember when contact centers were called ‘call centers’? The shift in nomenclature

that’s taken place over the past decade is a nod to the rapid evolution in how customers

interact with brands.

Where once there were just two channels - in person and over the phone - today, customers

interact with brands across a whole range of channels, from chatbots and email to social

media and IoT devices.

Contact centers were the next-generation call center — unshackled from the negative

connotations of outbound marketing and sales functions, and set up to be an omnichannel

contact hub, handling every customer contact, regardless of the channel.

The future hasn’t arrived just yet.

Some 49% of all contact centers still only manage a single channel.1 Managers we

interviewed also said that even when multiple communication channels are co-located, there

is minimal overlap and channel rotation in terms of management and staffing.

Rather than creating omnichannel contact centers, organizations have instead established

silos that fly in the face of how customers actually interact with them.


64% of contact center managers have difficulty understanding customer journeys.

1. What Contact Centers Are Doing Right Now, 2017.

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PHONE CALLS ARE JUST ONE PART OF A COMPLEX CUSTOMER JOURNEY

The intent behind omnichannel contact centers is well intentioned - after all, customers

interact through a series of different channels in order to complete a task.

38% of all journeys we measured started on a digital platform. Interestingly, 43% of those

ended with a phone call.

When we look at younger consumers (aged 18-44), there’s more of a bias towards digital

when choosing a channel.

The data shows that while organizations may think in silos, consumers don’t. They pick and

choose their channels to suit different tasks and will mix and match channels as they see fit.

The end result for customers is a disjointed experience. They might speak to one agent

on live chat, another on social media and another still on the phone — and when those

channels are run in isolation, it’s almost impossible to provide a seamless experience.

YOUNGER CONSUMERS ARE:

2Xmore likely than older consumers to accept social media as an end-to-end communication channel

2Xmore likely than older consumers to accept a smart home device as an end-to-end communication channel

1.6Xmore likely than older consumers to accept SMS texting as an end-to-end communication channel

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ENABLE AGENTS TO DELIVER OMNICHANNEL EXPERIENCES

One of the behaviors customers cited as “least liked” when dealing with contact centers —

having to re-identify themselves and re-explain issues when switching between channels —

is a direct result of this siloed setup.

It’s particularly common on phone conversations which began on a digital channel. 90% of

consumers are in favor of their most recent website or mobile app sessions being visible to

the phone agent in order to improve their experience. And when this doesn’t occur, 85% of

customers blame both the company and the agent.

It’s time for contact centers to catch up, bringing together the systems to share customer

data across different channels and embracing true co-location where agents are trained on

multiple channels in order to break down silos and deliver on customer expectations


part 1


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Managing a contact center is a difficult balancing act. In our study, contact center

managers cited two particular issues as their most difficult tasks:

+ Forecasting call volume

+ Attaining staffing levels

Getting both of these right is essential to delivering good customer experiences, and failure

to achieve the right balance can have knock-on effects across the customer journey.

Call volumes are hard to predict, and can be affected by anything from seasonality to news

reports, website glitches or other technical and product/service failures.

Staffing levels meanwhile are equally complex, affected by local job market competition,

public transit delays, local weather or even the characteristics of the workforce (e.g., %

holding multiple jobs, staff age, company type, etc).

Investing in multi-skilling your workforce can alleviate these pressures and help transform

your contact center into a true ‘experience headquarters’.


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THE TREND TOWARDS DESKILLING MUST STOP

Over the past 2 years, multi-skilling agents has dropped in prevalence from 90% to 80%,

signalling a small but growing shift in contact center actively seeking to de-skill their workforce.

The logic is that by alleviating the training burden on new agents, contact centers are able

to drive operational efficiencies.

It’s another firm-centric move, designed to drive operational efficiencies. However, the impact

on customers is profound. 65% of consumers say “being passed from agent to agent” and

“not receiving a resolution to my issue” are the top issues they face with contact centers.

When the skillset of an agent is decreased, the likelihood of either of these two outcomes

increases dramatically.

Beyond the customer metrics, it’s been shown when only two activities can be solved by

agents at their desks and the rest are passed on to others, employee engagement declines.

And when engagement drops, it follows that attrition will rise.

So by de-skilling, contact centers risk delivering poor experiences to customers and

increasing their staff turnover, adding yet more to their training costs and leaving them

struggling to achieve the balance between call volumes and staffing.

Read more:

The Compelling Agent Experience -

Improving Engagement and Productivity in Your Contact Center

https://www.qualtrics.com/ebooks-guides/call-center-agent-experience-guide/

https://www.qualtrics.com/ebooks-guides/call-center-agent-experience-guide/


part 1


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Customers today don’t just want personalization — they demand it. In fact 66% of

customers would prefer to make their own choices to design an ‘optimal’ solution to a

problem, while new research from Professor Jagdip Singh demonstrates how ‘co-created

solutions’ deliver better customer experiences.

The problem for many contact centers is that this approach requires a degree of agent

autonomy - something that remains a rarity in the industry. In fact, according to some

reports, more than 50% of all contact center interactions are still scripted.

There are few things more frustrating to a customer trying to solve a problem than being

met with an emotionless, unwavering script being read back to them.

It’s the same for agents too — a study by Gartner CEB revealed that empowerment of agents

was the #1 predictor of their performance, while our own study shows that 30% of agents say

being unable to influence the product or service is their biggest dislike in their roles.

Download our Employe Engagement survey template


https://hbr.org/ideacast/2018/01/for-better-customer-service-offer-options-not-apologies.html

https://www.qualtrics.com/templates/employee-engagement-survey/

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In order to create agents of the future who can manage all the possibilities during

customer interactions, not only must they be fully-skilled but they must also be empowered

and free-thinking.

Ditching the call script is the logical extension.

Naturally, you’ll want to have some guardrails in place — after all, there is a limit to what you

can deliver whether that’s in terms of cost to the business, or down to pure practicalities.

Using something simple like a checklist system, similar to those used by pilots and

surgeons, can help to manage that. It provides structure and safety to the process while

giving agents the autonomy to own the moment and directly influence the outcome.

Download our sample agent checklist

https://success.qualtrics.com/rs/542-FMF-412/images/Qualrics_CX_Contact_Center_Agent_Checklist.pdf

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part 1


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Disrupting the 2020 Contact Center: Technology

As you look to transform your contact center and move it from being a cost center to a

strategic driver of growth, technology plays a key role.

The technology platforms in many contact centers are in desperate need of upgrading, with

capital expenditure kept tight as leadership teams continue to see operational effectiveness

as their primary goal when it comes to managing and maintaining their contact centers.

There’s a shift to the cloud, with 20% of contact centers already there and another 40%

in some phase of transitioning away from on-premise solutions. But there’s another

conversation that needs to be considered as they look to the future with both experience

management and artificial intelligence (AI), a key part of the transformation from contact

center to experience center.






THE STUDY

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From that study, we’ve identified 3 main areas where organizations can focus to re-imagine

the role of the contact center and move away from being a cost center to being a key driver

of growth:


business outcomes





In this section of the report, we’ll look at how Experience Management Platforms and AI

are offering new solutions to help contact centers:

+ Break down silos

+ Close the loop with customers faster

+ Design differentiated experiences

+ Drive customer loyalty

+ Engage employees

+ Grow your brand

https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/


part 1


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Over the past 10-15 years contact centers have gathered mountains of data as a result of

using technology to understand and optimize the experience for customers.

They include self-completion questionnaire and survey mechanisms, IVR feedback loops,

performance dashboards, closed-loop ticketing systems and lightweight analytical tools.

However, the proliferation of different tools across the organization has resulted in a conflict

of “information ownership”, building data silos between departments (and sometimes

even within them too), and preventing vital data and insights from being shared across

workstreams.

The social media team has their data. The phone agents have their data. The chatbot teams

have their data. And so on…

But what about the customer? We know from our study that customers will use a variety of

different channels to interact with an organization, picking and choosing them depending on

the task and switching between them effortlessly in a bid to get it done.


17% of contact center managers say they can identify the friction points that cause negative customer experiences

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Contact centers need to be able to connect all of their data, from every channel, onto

a single platform in order to put the customer and their journeys at the center of their

approach to experience management.

Connecting the dots between different channels helps you:

The experience management platforms available today put your customers and their journeys

at the heart of everything.

It’s a natural evolution of the technology to bring every customer interaction into a single

data warehouse.

Rather than looking at customer insights by channel, you see them by customer, segment, or

journey, giving you the foundations to design experiences around your customers, exceed their

expectations and providing the seamless experience they demand in our omnichannel world.

+ Detect failure anomalies faster

+ Identify the root cause of issues on

omnichannel journeys

+ Receive real-time alerts about issues

impacting your customers on one

channel that may lead to a spike in

activity on another

+ Deliver a seamless experience when

customers switch channels by sharing

data across different teams

+ Solve immediate customer problems

quickly (‘inner loop’ solutions) while fixing

broader, organization-wide issues

(‘outer loop’ solutions)


part 1


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A key part of any experience management program is gathering feedback and using it to:

+ Close the loop on customer problems quickly

+ Mine deep insights to help design differentiated customer experiences

Your tech stack therefore needs to enable that by helping you gather feedback across

channels, consolidate it, analyze it and surface the most important insights and actions

your agents can take to delight customers.

Next we’ll take a look at some of the essential innovations that will help you design and

deliver differentiated customer experiences.


# of Calls

4,066Avg Call Length (Min)

11First Call Resolution

92%Channel Switch

43%

Weekly Call Stats

Call Sentiment by Topic

Filters

0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0

Distribution

Custom Widgets

Translation

Users

Login/Password Issues

Data & Analysis

Export Data

Dashboards

Sharing

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MOVE OVER IVR, IT’S TIME TO DEPLOY VOICE ANALYTICS

In the past, the main feedback mechanisms open to contact centers after a customer

phone call were IVR or survey methods (e.g., SMS or email surveys). These feedback

methods however are limiting — constant requests for feedback not only impact the

customer experience but can also impact data quality as customers become fatigued by

the volume of surveys.

In recent years, voice-to-text has emerged as the solution to gather feedback from customer

calls. Calls are automatically transcribed in real time, and passed through sophisticated text

analytics software to turn voice conversations into actionable insights.

It automatically surfaces key topics and sentiment on every call, providing valuable customer

feedback without ever asking someone to fill out a survey.

The sheer volume of data means you’re able to identify key drivers and trends in customer

experience, and proactively probe for closed loop opportunities.

Plus, it provides a rich source of referenceable audio clips you can tag and save to use later,

whether you’re coaching staff or explaining data to executives with real-life examples of calls.

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SCALING AND ENABLING CLOSED LOOP THROUGH PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS

One of the most interesting findings from our study when it comes to the technology contact

center managers have available is the low incidence of closed loop processes.

This is one area of technology that is fairly mature and has been available to contact centers for

over a decade. So what’s holding them back?

The main issues we found were ‘issues with scalability’ and ‘lack of consumer interest’. Digging

deeper we found most contact center managers felt they weren’t set up to handle the expected

call volumes from a closed loop process and were also unable to identify which customers

required a follow-up and which didn’t.

Model Diagnostic

The predictive model has been created, based on a deep learning neural network of 121 neurons across 1 layer

PREDICTION DRIVERS

CustServ Calls

State

Intl Plan

Q4: NPS

Q12: Reliability Rating

Show other drivers ›

PREDICTION DRIVERS

72.0% 54.5%Precision Recall

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It’s a problem that’s being solved by the rise in predictive analytics. Put simply, predictive

analytics uses historic data to apply behavioral models and make powerful predictions about

what customers will do next.

Applying predictive analytics to contact center experience management can help to prioritize

customers based on a scoring system (e.g., likelihood to churn), triggering a closed loop

process to initiate a recovery.

It solves the problem of prioritization and allows contact center managers to divert scarce

resources to those customers who need it most, following up on those cases which will have the

biggest impact on the bottom line.

2X customers who are recovered after a bad experience are 2X more loyal to the brand after the recovery

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RETHINK THE ROLE OF AI IN AGENT COACHING

As with most industries, artificial intelligence (AI) has been held up as something of a poster

child for transformation in recent years. However, it’s something that has come under fire from

both customers and agents.

Typically used as a coaching device through ‘screen pops’ or ‘whisper coaching’, it’s used to

provide ‘helpful’ tips to agents such as ‘the customer is getting upset’ or ‘don’t forget to remind

them about the 20% saving on XYZ upgrade’.

But here’s the thing — agents hate them. 30% of the contact center agents we surveyed said

they were one of the things they hated most about their jobs.

Aside from being an irritating interjection to a call, they have the effect of removing autonomy

from the agent — something we know negatively impacts engagement and is another

frustrating part of life for many contact center agents.

30% of agents say that being unable to influence the product or service was the biggest dislike in their roles

AI can be a powerful tool, but rather than using AI to teach the humans, it’s time to flip the

script and get the humans to train the AI.

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SCALING CONTACT CENTERS WITHOUT ADDED HEADCOUNT

Current State With 5,000 loyal customers and well-designed products and services,

ACME Corp needs only 100 excellent, well-compensated full-time agents to staff their

contact center. These agents work cross-channel on rotation and have been given the

option to work remotely, if they choose.

Challenge ACME Corp executives plan on doubling the size of their business in the next

5 years, but they will do it by broadening their marketing and product ranges, decreasing

the niche aspect of their business… and their customers. The executive team anticipates

that the average contact center interaction will change, rise in number and encounter a

new type of customer they have not seen before. The executive team is concerned that the

brand reputation - hard-won through amazing agents - has the potential to be jeopardized

if the contact center cannot be scaled. The real challenge is that the talent acquisition team

projects they can only achieve a 25% increase in labor force during that 5-year period if

hiring standards are to be maintained. The only proposed solution is to lower the bar to get

more headcount or risk dramatically increased wait times or by completely reimagining

how the contact center works (e.g. speak with a specialist by appointment only).

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Solution Instead of lowering the hiring bar on agents, the deployment of collaborative

AI systems will “study” the current workflows, behaviors and patterns of these high-

performing agents on bot voice and text-based (social, chat, SMS, home device) systems.

These systems will be trained simultaneous to the investment in new high-end agents.

When ready, AI-led solutions will begin taking over non-voice-based cases. As successes

and failures occur, the AI learns probabilistically. If needed, high-end agents can coach

the AI maintenance team on correct workflows. If the workflow for a unique interaction

fails entirely, that session can be passed back to a live agent in the same channel or an

alternative channel can be selected.

Outcome The quality and skill of the agents, often contained within tacit and implicit

knowledge networks, is scaled through technology such that human customers are

provided both exceptional service as well as consistent service across all channels. Digital

re-designs allow for an increased proportion of interactions to occur on non-voice channels

and the phone-based workrate of calls declines as percentage (though higher in absolute)

which is compensated for by added hiring.


part 1

Connected X- and O-DataSECTION 12

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Throughout our reports on the 2020 Contact Center, one theme has dominated - the

prioritization of operational efficiency over customer outcomes.

It’s reinforced by a culture that considers contact centers a ‘sunk cost’, as well as by

practices on the ground that are firm-centric, such as deskilling the workforce and

operating in silos rather than embracing the omnichannel customer journey.

In today’s experience economy, this approach is short-sighted and ignores the vital role

contact centers have to play in designing and delivering differentiated experiences.

Previously, few organizations have had the technology to prove out the case for a move

towards a more customer-centric model.

In the past, operational data (o-data) for the organization’s key contact center metrics such

as average call times, time to resolution, average handling time and cost per contact were

collected and stored in one system. The business’ financial data was stored in another.

CRM data containing customer records was stored in yet another. And finally, experience

data (x-data) from any feedback programs were stored in yet another system.

With data siloed, it was near-impossible to demonstrate how a more customer-centric

approach would impact the business’ core metrics.

The technology available today changes the game, now that Experience Management

Platforms have arrived to bring all your o- and x-data together on a single platform.

Connected X- and O-Data

5252


This means you can analyze your data holistically, and see how changes in your o-data (say

for example, average call time), impact your x-data, such as customer satisfaction or loyalty.

You can also share data with the existing platforms your agents already use, say for

example your CRM. So the next time a customer contacts you, your agents can see their

full activity history, helping them to make better decisions for your customers.

A true Experience Management Platform goes beyond just customer data — by pulling in

x- and o-data from other core experiences such as employee, brand and product, you can

start to see the full picture and identify the levers to pull to have the biggest impact on the

business as a whole.

For example, you can see how the internal initiatives you put in place to engage, upskill and

motivate agents impact both the customer and the business’s bottom line. Or, you could

monitor how changes in your contact center impact brand loyalty and preference.

The contact center of the future will be able to closely monitor every experience

that impacts customers, share the right data and insights with agents and deliver

personalized, differentiated experiences to customers — all by using the right technology

to enable the culture and competencies that will drive your transformation around

experience management.


part 1

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