Contact center leaders are increasingly prioritizing the experiences of customer service representatives to improve customer experiences, according to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by CallMiner, which also found that the majority of organizations also plan to maintain their remote or hybrid contact centres. This article is copyright 2021 The Best Customer Guide.

Widespread remote work, a boom in digital interactions, and increased automation has resulted in brands seeing the phone as the new empathy channel. To effectively arm CSRs for these emotionally driven customer interactions, organizations need to capture data on customer journeys and interactions, and implement new tools to support supervisors and agents.

In fact, nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents have increased their focus on improving the CSR experience, through means such as adopting AI and automation technologies to empower CSRs to be the ’empathy agents’ that customers require.

The study found that:

  • CX is the north star for CSR improvement efforts
    According to the study, 70% of respondents agree that a good customer-agent experience often deescalates a bad brand experience. The KPIs that matter most to senior stakeholders are Net Promoter Score, service level, customer satisfaction, and agent satisfaction.
  • Voice is the new empathy channel
    68% of respondents agree that the phone has become the new empathy channel for customers, and most agree that CSRs are now dealing with more complex customer requests (67%) and emotionally charged customers (70%) than ever before.
  • Organizational disconnect is a barrier to meeting market opportunities
    Training for empathy is hard. Respondents admit it is challenging for CSRs to anticipate customer needs (57%) and to consider, interpret and even measure a customer’s dynamic emotional state (56%). According to the study, 53% of respondents also struggle to understand a customer’s full journey, as well as to support supervisors now that they are physically separated from their teams (57%).

“The pandemic upended the standard ideas of customer service. To meet these shifting demands, organizations have had to accelerate digitalization, automation and AI strategies,” said Jeff Gallino, CTO, CallMiner. “To effectively arm CSRs for every customer conversation, including the emotionally driven ones, brands must prioritize analyzing every interaction. Being able to interpret emotion and identify patterns from customer interactions at scale enables organizations to more effectively support CSRs and use those insights to drive improved enterprise-wide decisions.”

The study also shows that organizations are turning to specific practices and product capabilities to meet these challenges, including:

  • Empowering CSRs and leaders with the right insights
    67% of decision-makers say their organizations will retain some form of remote and/or hybrid contact center. As leaders invest in future-proofing their contact centers, they are prioritizing empowering CSRs and their supervisors to address customer needs. Through the power of AI, CSRs can quickly and accurately gauge customer emotion and be guided in real-time with next-best-action advice.
  • Smart adoption of automation and AI for better decision making and experiences
    Improving CSR experience means applying behavioral data to optimize decision making to future-proof contact centers and achieve a competitive edge. In fact, more than half (56%) of respondents said future-proofing their contact center would lead to improved insights that could support enterprise decision-making.

“Contact center agents and CSRs are key to shaping brand experiences, and when they feel supported and empowered, it’s no surprise that customer experiences improve. When organizations prioritize the strategies needed to improve customer loyalty and customer experiences, business improvement follows,” concluded Gallino.

Original Source – used with permission