Finally, the year of most disruption, upheaval and uncertainty is over. This year has brought a new perspective on how business could be done. For contact centers too, it was a year of unprecedented change and acceleration, providing an industry-wide reset to reflect, reassess, and rethink the way business is done.
This year has brought an overall shift to a deeply integrated and digital-first experience. Contact centers aren’t just performing triage amid a crisis – they’re doubling down on growth and innovation too.
So, what should be the planning criteria for 2021, what can they learn from this year and help shape next steps amid uncertainty.
Here are a few key takeaways from this year’s study and what they reveal about the next stage of the contact center:
Omnichannel as a Work-in-Progress Opportunity
Year after year, achieving truly seamless omnichannel experiences remains a top priority for contact centers. It’s a direct correlation with the balance of power in modern customer experiences – customers dictate the nature of the relationship, so contact centers need to meet them where they are.
It isn’t something that the majority of professionals expect to perfect over the course of a single year, but rather a continuous journey. Omnichannel development needs flexibility and agility, so contact centers can pivot as their customers’ needs shift.
Big Shift in Digital Interactions
This last year has changed the traditional calculus between supporting digital and traditional channels, with the coronavirus pandemic driving more customers to embrace digital – a large percent of contact center leaders saw a greater volume of digital interactions. Naturally, this has contact center leaders questioning how best to train and deploy agents to address this shift.
A New Promise of AI
In the wake of nonstop disruption, contact centers have come to appreciate agility and flexibility above all else. When uncertainty defines the landscape, being able to pivot and capitalize on opportunities in real time is the difference between stagnation and growth. In this need for agility, a new frontier in the role of AI in the contact center has emerged. Rather than simply powering smarter communication tools, AI can underpin operations to provide a deeper level of analysis.
Smarter Customer Experiences
We occupy a completely different world than we did on January 1, 2020. The lessons and growth, however, have accelerated the contact center in ways no one could have foreseen. In an environment where customer experience is disruption-proof, a new species of contact center – agile, digital-first, and omnichannel fluent – is much closer to reality than ever thought possible.
[box type=”shadow” align=”” class=”” width=””]About ZRG
Founded in 1994, ZRG International is an ICT solutions company with a major focus on customer interaction technologies and solutions. We offer experience and innovation to help businesses manage customer relationship and achieve higher customer satisfaction and increased profitability.
ZRG has a proven track record of introducing innovations and exciting new possibilities in the customer communication areas. Our line of solutions cover all aspects of customer communication including customer contact center, CRM application suite, quality assurance suite, call center management tools, self-service automation tools, campaign management and teleconferencing. Our solutions are deployed at mission critical contact centers that are being used to provide information, assistance and services to millions of users each day through live agent and self-service based applications.
ZRG has an experienced and knowledgeable team capable of quickly designing and adding tailor-made features in our solutions for site-specific requirements. By using open standards systems, specifications and protocols, we ensure maximum flexibility and future growth of our solutions. We use innovative techniques to deliver latest features and integration capabilities in a most cost-effective manner. Our deployment team has successfully completed all our projects well before the deadlines.
Every day, on every project, we deliver value through our accumulated technical knowledge and project management skills. Our expertise delivers immediate benefits to our clients with cost and time savings. Our solution delivers increased operational efficiency and staff productivity to our valued clients. This is what we do. We deliver beyond expectations.[/box]