As more organisations focus on customer experience (CX), contact centres become ever-more important, with agents starring in the lead role of brand defenders. That’s a giant leap forward from the days when contact centres were considered cost centres. Nowadays, they have the power to increase customer loyalty, brand competitiveness and profits.
Take the example of a luxury design brand that cleverly deployed analytics and identified a packing issue that affected certain customers on one particular day. The ability to capture signals in a very targeted way allowed them to provide a VIP service to those affected, without harming their high-end reputation globally. After all, no one wants to be the next Gerald Ratner, still reeling 30 years on from the gaffe that sank his jewellery empire.
It all comes down to data. Contact centres collect unfiltered voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights like no other department and these insights can inform strategic decisions across a whole organisation. The challenge lies in bringing copious amounts of data together. In fact, 451 Research estimates that 39% of organisations have more than 50 data silos.
Today’s omnichannel expectations further complicate data management. Customers have an abundance of options to connect with their favourite brands, from AI-enabled chatbots and social media, to email and phone calls. This is great news for customers, but it presents more opportunities for valuable signals to get stuck throughout the customer journey, especially if agents and brands inadvertently miss vital clues when they cannot recognise a customer across different channels and devices.
Success requires leaders to strategise with the end of the customer journey in mind and then build systems to connect the signals received in-between. Kickstart the process by introducing a culture that continuously captures, transforms and applies insights to unstick critical signals and improve the overall customer experience and journey.
1. Capture data across the customer journey
The contact centre, often the first port of call for customers – and their valuable data – is a useful place to start. However, signals can come from any department, so capture everything. Then, drill down to the higher-value conversations where learning can be shared to drive continual improvements organisation-wide. Assess whether signals indicate an operational issue or if there is an emotional response that requires a different marketing approach. Steer your decision-making using automated technology.
2. Transform that data into actionable insights
Aim to aggregate, integrate and transform raw data from different systems and departments to create valuable business insights that are easy to analyse, digest and share. This is where AI-powered analytics solutions come into their own, ensuring every piece of data along the customer journey is taken into consideration.
Imagine you are a shipping and packaging company with a billing problem. Instead of taking the time to recognise this problem was only impacting 200 customers, you execute a nationwide email marketing campaign that goes to 50,000 customers detailing the issue. You have just advertised something that was only a problem for a small subset of customers to a much larger group, many of whom may panic and contact the company unnecessarily. Deploying analytics would have quickly contextualised the billing issue to those 200 so you could address it with personalised, one-to-one marketing – saving money and brand reputation.
3. Apply insights to enhance the customer experience
Once data is collected and analysed, act on the best insights to improve operations and enhance CX. While perhaps the most difficult stage, as it requires the most change and effort, this is where you see the true impact of the process. Just like GreenPath Financial Wellness in the US. Its contact centre and marketing teams partnered in their aim to reach under-served populations. By deploying speech analytics, they highlighted key phrases during customer calls to discover that billboards, social media and radio were the most effective ways of engaging these customers. They then shifted their marketing budget accordingly.
I believe it is always best to lead by example. To take your CX strategy to the next level, stay ahead of the competition and boost profitability, learn more about our CTA (capture, transform, apply) methodology by downloading our e-book ‘3 Award-Winning Workforce Optimization (WFO) Analytics Success Stories’.
Calabrio is the customer experience intelligence company that empowers organisations to enrich human interactions. Our AI-driven analytics tools make it easy for contact centres to uncover customer sentiment and share compelling insights with other parts of the organisation.