We’re supposed to be on our way out of this pandemic but nobody seems to have told contact centres. I know plenty capitalise on cloud technology to allow agents to work from home, thereby negating the “due to Covid wait times are 30 minutes longer” excuse. It just never seems to be any of the ones I need to call!
I think each of these is a red-hot sales opportunity for enterprising channel partners; tell them it’s 2021 and that no contact centre should be compromised just because people aren’t in the office.
What’s really new about contact centres is the opportunity for the channel to target SME customers for the first time. Affordability and accessibility are no longer sticking points. “Not being big enough” is no barrier for smaller customers innovating omnichannel customer experiences with chat, email, voice and social.
Larger organisations will need to up their game, which is more good news throughout the channel. Support to Win enables them all. There are great CCaaS opportunities everywhere. My message is go out and sell them, safe in the knowledge that the technical implementation will be swift and straightforward.
Contact centres embody the saying, “work is what you do, not where you go”. That’s very attractive to contact centre workers who just want the right tools to do their jobs – preferably from home and around flexible hours. With the economy rebounding, contact centres who facilitate this will find it easier to fill positions and attract talent – driving CCaaS demand further.
We’re also seeing new trends in consumer behaviour that impact on the contact centre, and new ways in which contact centres are innovating. For example, using collaboration (Teams video calls and screen sharing for example) to discuss documentation, address specific queries and fill forms. Again, it’s all about the customer experience, and using that to stand out from competitors. A case of “my contact centre is better than yours” among companies of all sizes looking for an edge.
And it’s not just the initial implementation or upgrade of contact centres that counts, but how they perform in the long-run. There’s no more unedifying prospect than a contact centre having to call a help desk – like the sad sight of an AA van broken down by the side of the road. Equipping contact centre admins and users with the right skills is a big part of this; alongside the necessity of accurate configuration and testing.
If you want to jump the queue on contact centre adoptions, give me a call!