The Contact Centre is a critical tool for any business. This meeting point between the brands and consumers is how companies build valuable relationships with their clients. However, it can also be a powerful factor in strengthening brand reputation, so that you can stand out from the competition.
With a powerful contact centre solution, companies can turn one-time customers into loyal repeat clients and brand advocates. Unfortunately, legacy tools can’t always deliver the results that customers are looking for. Around 90% of customers say they want immediate responses to their questions, which can be difficult to accomplish with some older tools.
As customer demand continues to evolve, and the way brands and clients interact transforms, the contact centre is changing at an astronomical pace. This is particularly true following the rise of COVID-19, which forced more contact centres to consider remote and distributed teams. Today, we’re speaking to experts from UJET, 8x8, and Twilio to get their insights into what contact centres will look like in 2021.
What Are the Most Significant Customer Trends from 2020?
The demand for flexible contact centre solutions is rising. Grandview research suggest that the market for contact centre software will reach a value of $72.3 billion by 2027.
Contact Centres as a Service, and solutions on the cloud are opening the door to endless new opportunities for businesses, and their customers. According to some reports, cloud contact centres even experience up to 35% less downtime than on-premise tools.
This year, we’ve seen various trends in the contact centre market, ranging from the rise of remote agents, to the increasing need for instant messaging and video. Here’s what our experts said about 2020’s leading trends.
Anand Janefalkar, Founder and CEO of UJET:
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Anand Janefalkar[/caption]
UJET’s CEO and Founder, Anand Janefalkar, told us that the most significant trend in 2020 has been the rapid evolution of remote work and life. This shift is fast-tracking the migration to cloud, and adoption of new technology. At the same time, it’s also accelerating demand for more mobile and digital channels.
“Another key trend from 2020 has been the significance of both scale and reliability, and more importantly, the two of them together. For some, 2020 has brought on the demand to rapidly scale, increasing team size without compromising on service. For others, scaling down has been a necessary part of streamlining their operations.”
Anand says that 2020 has shown us all that businesses need to be able to scale up and down rapidly, while still providing reliable customer interactions and experiences.
Chris Marron, Director of Competitive & Market Intelligence at 8x8:
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Chris Marron[/caption]
Director of Competitive and Market Intelligence at 8x8, Chris Marron says that the biggest change we’ve seen is the rising demand for digital adoption in the home. People who would typically go into a store or use the phone are using digital media to interact with companies. This shift is particularly significant among older generations.
“Whether it’s reduced capacity in contact centres or agents working fully from home, the great home working experiment has forced customers to use digital channels either for the first time or as a way to access more services than they did before.”
Customers have shown a massive willingness to provide companies with patience in this new era, as brands shift into the online world. However, their patience is beginning to wear thin, according to Chris. “People are quick to compare their interactions with businesses that have switched to remote working well, and those who have yet to fully transition or – at worst – who are unresponsive even on digital channels.”
David Parry-Jones, Vice President of EMEA at Twilio:
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David Parry-Jones[/caption]
Twilio’s Vice President of EMEA, David Parry-Jones, says that this year, the company has seen COVID-19 driving a massive digital acceleration and increased need for flexible platforms of customer engagement. There’s been a real demand for communication solutions that can scale quickly, deploy fast, and adapt, as necessary.
“Our latest research found that around 53% of businesses added new channels to their network during the pandemic. Around 1 in 3 began using live chat because of the pandemic. “This year it’s been more important than ever to ensure you’re reaching people on the channels they are comfortable using as everyone is grappling with a rapidly changing set of services”
On average, companies have accelerated their digital communications strategy by 6 years due to the pandemic. This isn’t something that’s just going to impact the short-term. Customer expectations remain unchanged, but companies are realising that they need to be flexible in the way that they communicate to meet their needs using suitable channels.
What are the Top Challenges Facing End Customers?
Companies in the new contact centre landscape are under excessive pressure to provide the experiences that their audiences want, without compromising on things like performance, affordability, or security. Though many businesses are making progress towards things like smarter, more diverse experiences, there’s still work to do.
Companies are still struggling to align the customer service offering across every available channel, while simultaneously responding to queries at speed. Liveops say that around two thirds of respondents in their study feel that they’re “behind the curve” on Contact Centre tech. We asked our business leaders what the most substantial changes facing end customers will be as we move forward into 2021. Here’s what they had to say:
Anand Janefalkar, Founder and CEO of UJET:
UJET’s founder and CEO told us that while companies are making significant progress towards a full and fluid omnichannel experience, the reality is that end-user solutions are still fragmented. As we head into the new year of 2021, companies will begin to tackle the challenge of mirroring agent experiences and fluidity for customers.
“Brands will begin to reduce the cognitive distance between the issue and the resolution, for both agents and customers”
Anand also noted that customers are using smartphones and mobile apps now more than ever. The biggest challenge will be to meet these customers where they are, through mobile chat and mobile web solutions, providing a contextual, rich, and modern experience for all.
Chris Marron, Director of Competitive & Market Intelligence at 8x8:
According to Director of Competitive and Market Intelligence for 8x8, Chris Marron, many contact centres were struggling with understaffing issues during lockdown, and afterwards. For many, this problem came from budget cuts and the rise of staff members on furlough. The challenge for customers now is that some contact centres are making it harder to get answers to questions.
Reducing connection options means that contact centres can avoid being overwhelmed. However, customers often suffer when they’re deflected towards FAQs and self-service chatbots. The chatbot solutions available from most companies today aren’t mature enough to handle complicated interactions.
“All this can really impact consumers' trust in a brand, and so it’s important to ensure that whichever channels customers are being redirected to are as effective as possible”
David Parry-Jones, Vice President of EMEA at Twilio:
EMEA VP for Twilio, David Parry-Jones, said that siloes will continue to be a significant problem for customers in the current landscape, until companies can remove them completely from the experience. Clients want to be able to pick up a conversation a week after it began, using more than one channel, or even starting with a different department.
