Businesses that stand apart always have customer experience at heart. According to a Forrester survey, companies that lead in customer experience (CX) outperform others by nearly 80%. If you’re trying to meet business growth targets, you can surely understand the importance of investing in consumer services.
The first step businesses need to take is to prioritise call centre CX. That’s where customers connect with your business, and they have high expectations to be treated well.
Furthermore, customer experience management—an often-overlooked aspect—needs proper attention. Most businesses tend to overlook this because they’re busy dealing with various challenges. These include juggling between channels and touchpoints, fulfilling complex call centre guidelines, and handling the variability of agent performances. Amid this chaos, meeting your CX goals may be a testing endeavour.
Thankfully, the latest tools let you automate and standardise customer experience, and eventually take it to the next level. But before investing in digital workflow automation, it’s imperative to understand the reasons why your organisation lacks on the call centre CX front.
What are the Possible Reasons for a Below-Par Call Centre CX?
Poor customer experiences do not happen out of the blue—there are solid reasons for consumers to feel their needs are not being met. As growing businesses rely on agents and IVR technology to handle the massive volume of inquiries, things may often go in the wrong direction.
Moreover, agent performance gets affected by the constant pressure to increase sales, often leading to poorer buyers’ experience
Customers’ expectations have soared in recent times. Agents are expected to do much more than just pitching products or resolving queries. No caller wants to navigate a confusing IVR system or repeat their details at every point of contact. This reduces satisfaction rates and eventually leads to a diminished perception of the brand.
Businesses wanting to overcome these challenges need to offer personalised experiences based on the interests, buying behaviour, demographics, and psychographics of the callers.
However, it is easier said than done in the current state of affairs—where broken customer journeys, variable agent effectiveness, and silos are rampant.
What is Workflow Automation and How can it Help Businesses?
Workflow automation refers to a series of activities with one action automatically triggering the next. It uses digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate routine tasks, improving efficiency and CX in the call centre. While customers get speedy responses to their queries, agents need not be involved in every small task.
There are immense benefits of integrating your existing services with digital workflow automation tools. These include:
- Enabling customised workflow
- Reducing the workload of call centre agents
- Simplifying repetitive tasks
- Enhancing productivity and efficiency
- Cutting down human error and negligence
Therefore, it makes sense to embrace innovative digital technologies right away to get your business on track.
What are the Prevailing Call Centre CX Issues and How can Automation Address them?
When it comes to real issues that may be affecting the call centre experience of your customers, the list is long and daunting. But fortunately, digital workflow automation tools can address them for good. This is your opportunity to improve your customer service enough to match user expectations and win their hearts.
Let’s explore these issues and their solutions in detail.
Extended Calls
When you call your customers, you cannot expect them to drop everything else and listen to your lengthy sales pitch. Additionally, work hassles and frustration could leave them averse to sales calls.
Consider making things interesting for customers by integrating multimedia into traditional voice-based conversations. Automated workflows let the agents send across a text message link with images, descriptions, and prices of products and services they want to sell.
Obsolete Supplementary Channels
It’s good to connect with clients over multiple channels rather than only phone calls. However, some channels, such as paper-based fax and mail, are obsolete and do not fit into the digital world anymore. You need to establish a presence right where customers want and make things easier for them.
With digital workflow automation, for example, conditional logic can be embedded into the web-based forms. Conditional fields open up only when a customer selects a specific option or gives certain answers. They can easily fill the form even while on call, which enhances the overall experience.
Complex Call Scripts
The best time to close deals is when customer interest is at a peak. But agents tend to experience a break in the call momentum when they have to read out long and complex call scripts.
Employ automation to generate product-specific T&C scripts and send them directly to the customer’s phone for review and consent. You will end up with a great CX without compromising compliance.
PCI Compliance for Payment Processing
As digital payments become a norm for call centres, businesses also require PCI-compliant solutions for reliable and secure payment processing. Many of these solutions are outdated as they rely on DTMF technology. Moving to a smart automated solution that delivers real-time payment requests to customers via secure mobile environments is the best way to resolve this issue.
Self-Service Options
Not every sales or service interaction needs to be handled by agents personally. Why add to their burden when you can employ automation for routine tasks? Equipping your call centre with a robust self-service option is the right way to leverage digital workflow automation.
You also need to encourage callers to prioritise self-service to expedite the queries that do not require human intervention. They can use IVR to get a digital form or make a purchase, or even upgrade online.
Conclusion
As the business landscape becomes even more competitive, customer experience emerges as one of the most significant factors that can make your company stand apart.
Consumers are more likely to stay with brands that are great at service and support. Automated workflow tools empower call centres to take CX a notch higher while making the most of their human capabilities. Considering the benefits, digital automation becomes the best investment that a business can make for its customer service operations.
Author bio:
Vanita Arora is a marketing enthusiast and technical writer associated with Servetel, a prominent IVR service provider. Being greatly in love with music & travelling, she has always been fascinated with technology. She believes words have the power to change the world and is working on turning her ideas into words every day.
