For decades, contact centres have faced numerous challenges that keep biting back. Meagre budgets, IT issues, and conflicting business priorities are all prominent examples that have long wreaked havoc across the space.
As such, contact centre leaders have become a hearty breed, known for rising to the occasion and putting out fires left, right, and centre.
However, with quick-fire technology changes, rising customer demand, and the so-called Great Resignation, perhaps these fires have never blazed higher.
Assessing the current climate within the space, a new global survey from Hammer pinpoints three concerning trends that are fanning the flames.
1. The Broader Business Heaps Pressure onto the Contact Centre
89 percent of contact centre leaders believe that the business has unrealistic expectations of them.
The report also uncovered increases in contact centre demand, call abandon rates, and average speed of answer across the industry.
Tying these two points together, it seems that many businesses expect contact centres to become progressive, proactive operations that play a critical role in delivering excellent CX.
However, increasing contact volumes and the associated challenges – such as hiring the staff to meet demand, managing service level, and maintaining a reasonable occupancy rate – are stilting the evolution of customer service operations.
Adding to this point, John D’Anna, President of Hammer, said at the 2022 CX Summit:
“Contact centres are feeling the pressure from the business. Meanwhile, contact volumes are still rising across every channel. On top of that, agents are leaving organisations in greater numbers than ever before… It’s a difficult time.”
The Solution
Building better relationships with department leaders is crucial to proliferating the contact centre point of view and managing expectations across the company.
The trend of merging UCaaS and CCaaS solutions is facilitating these close relationships.
With them, operations can identify upstream issues with CX testing tools and team up with other departments to fix these. Doing so will lower contact centre strain.
Well-being initiatives must also take priority, as they may help to stem the flow of attrition.
2. Hybrid Work Challenges the Contact Centre Infrastructure
The transition to hybrid work proved far from plain sailing for many operations. Still, headlines such as “Hybrid work for many is messy and exhausting” and “Is hybrid work the worst of both worlds?” are in no short supply.
Yet, in most cases, it is here to stay. So, that means overcoming engagement problems and other hybrid working woes relating to contact centre infrastructure.
The following statistics from the Hammer report highlights a couple of prominent examples:
- 69 percent of contact centres have experienced challenges around voice quality for home-based agents over the last 12 months
- 66 percent of contact centres say the frequency of outages has increased in the past year
Commenting on these worrying hybrid working trends, D’Anna states:
“If we don’t get new technology right, there is a very real risk that customer frustration will continue to spiral with alarming consequences for agents’ mental health.
“Technology is supposed to empower agents, but organizations who rush into it, without proper planning and testing, risk doing the opposite.”