It’s the time of the year when many companies are looking to plan out their strategies for 2016. New features on a product or solution or competitive price for the product is no longer enough to differentiate from competitors. It is essential for companies to improve their customers’ experiences to reach higher customer referral rates, increase customer satisfaction, make easier the customer acquisition & engagement, drive customer loyalty and improve customer retention.
Within the Contact Center industry, the TOP 5 Trends for 2016 we can see:
1-The Omni-channel customer strategy
Customers are very demanding so companies must bring all channels together in one integrated system and with a consistent strategy to communicate easily and provide a seamless experience. The omni-channel strategy is a must. The main challenge of the customer service department is to immediately identify customers’ needs and answer questions using and adapting the messages through different channels: chat, e-mail, mobile phone & Apps, SMS, video, social media, etc. and deliver a really high quality experience. Brands have in how to engage customers and captures behavioral pathways and attitudes at each stage of the purchase and in every unique channel. Customers want to increase their level of interactions in real-time before buying their products or services. In the Contact Center, with the new technology, each interaction can be tailored on the process to determine behavior standards and ensure smoothly buying process. Marketers have to deliver consistent messages with high quality service levels through different channels through online shop, stores or mobiles devices.
2-The Personalized Customer Engagement
Each customer wants to be unique and feel exceptional with truly personalized, highly customized offers, in ways that drive stronger, more profitable relationships, better serving the customers’ needs by giving them exactly what they want, when they want it. The companies need to adjust its offerings to the needs of individual customers based on an understanding of what they want. To increase loyalty/commitment of the customer the companies aim for the Wow! Factor in order to sell more, better and with more profit. The channels such as video, texting & social media have a positive impact and help persuade customers offering them a unique customer experience.
3-Big Data
Thanks to social networks, IT infrastructure data storage improvement, behavioral analytics software, there is far more data available everywhere than ever before. Also thanks to digital transformation, consumers and businesses have the power to behave in a far smarter and better-informed manner than ever before. The data that each customer can produce combined with the ability to analyze the information, means that analysis of the information will improve company’s competitiveness. For sure, one of the most impactful sources of big data is the recording, storage, and management of recorded calls in the Contact Center industry as well as service performance and agent productivity metrics and indicator derived from Contact Center operations. Being able to access the data in the calls, enables companies to improve customer experience and increase agent performance.
4-Virtual/Cloud Contact Center
Agents won’t need to be in the same location, they can work from different part of the country (geographically dispersed) and in different places. Also agents will be able to work remotely, “from home, from any time, any place, anywhere”. The main benefits of the cloud Contact Center technology for companies are costs savings in IT infrastructure, and higher adaptability of the companies as Contact Center virtualization will allow companies to grow and change quickly as their business does. Contact Centers have appreciated the benefits that cloud-based solutions offer, namely:
- Faster deployment
- Flexibility and scalability
- Ease of managing remote agents
- Management costs savings
5-Voice is not dead: voice biometrics
