McKinsey has identified a leap from 32% to 55% growth in digital engagement between customers and businesses between year-end 2019 and summer 2020.
This has triggered unprecedented omni-channel growth, with many companies reporting leaps in customer use of social channels, chat, messaging and even video.
But according to Puzzel’s new blog from Martin Hill-Wilson of Brainfood Consulting, these new technologies and behavioural trends are propelling a drive in resource planning due to the volume of customer interaction is more evenly distributed across modalities.
Hill-Wilson says: “Firstly, single-channel forecasting is less complex than multi-channel forecasting. So multi-channel forecasting takes longer to complete and can require additional contact relative to the greater effectiveness of omni-channel. This means productivity assumptions will need to be recalibrated based on your changing channel mix and contact centre platform capabilities.
“Secondly, voice has always had queuing challenges as the default customer service channel. But now we’re also starting to see queues for other live assistance channels, such as web chat. So given this new phase of rapid digital adoption we’re in, what happens if social and chat capacity starts to choke? Industry colleagues tell me this is already an issue in some sectors. How much additional wait time should be built in as a result?”
He adds: “Thirdly, is historic data still the prime reference for generating new forecasts given these fast-evolving customer behaviours? Resource planners must now look forward and anticipate how rapidly their customer base is changing engagement preferences. Given this, who has this insight in the organisation? Is anyone even tracking it? If not, how do planners plug into external sources to keep up with these behavioural shifts?”