The Emergence of a New Contact Centre Agent
28/07/2023
The Emergence of a New Contact Centre Agent
With service being a key differentiator for many organisations wishing to attract and retain their customers it’s now more important than ever that organisations reach their customer, quickly, effectively and offer a number of channels in which to do so.
In 2016 we saw the huge emergence of the ‘Omni-channel’ communications for all and since it has continued to separate proactive businesses from their more reactive counterparts. A holistic view of the customer experience, factoring in an omni-channel approach, is helping businesses give customers a more personal feel to resolutions.
More businesses are recognising that while a customer journey may begin on one channel, valuable insight and feedback from the customer is taking place on a completely different channel.
Unifying customer communications across channels gives businesses better context for their customers, helps resolve issues more quickly and helps agents identify better opportunities for future sales.
So it’s clear that an omni channel approach is the right approach, but how does that effect the agents delivering that communication? Well for some it can have a huge impact, it can mean a more interesting work environment, utilising different methods to communicate. It can mean learning to multi-task and gain valuable skills for the future. Perhaps most importantly however it could increase your employee retention as agents become more engaged in their work and the tasks are not so repetitive.
The benefits to the organisation are numerous, as discussed, but the skills required to deliver an omni channel approach are greater, there is a requirement for good written and spoken communication and the ability to multi-task and manage different channels in an instance.
The agents of the future will be far more enabled, will gain greater job satisfaction, develop more skills, be more likely to remain with the organisation and the icing on the cake, (for the agents!) they will be paid more! Yes, those organisations really looking to embrace the agent of the future will have to pay higher salaries, but they will get far more for their money and although the salaries will have to increase, the skill level and customer satisfaction will be far greater and perhaps the most expensive challenge facing most contact centres, ATTRITION, will decrease – in short, everyone’s a winner!