1. The future of contact centres lies in automation.
It’s the most cost-effective way of offering self-service to callers so that they can get what they want quickly and derive a satisfactory outcome from the call, thus gaining a favourable perception of the organisation/process/offer/service.
The days of being disgusted at not being able to ‘talk to a real person’ are, for most callers, long gone. People understand now that automated calls simply get the answer quicker or put them in contact with the right service quicker.
2. Natural selection
Automation brings operating costs down; in fact, it can almost make them go away (see below). For it to work effectively, though, avoiding aborted calls or transactions, the process has to make sense to the user. The flow from one step to the next has to be intuitive and user-friendly and not drag callers silently screaming through a maze of enclosed corridors.
3. Best practice
‘Making it user-friendly’ might sound obvious, but who amongst us hasn’t been confused by automated services which don’t quite offer the actual option we require? What happens then is that callers trick the system by giving incorrect responses to get through to other parts of the centre in a desperate quest for satisfaction. In other words, costs mount.
So, having designed the caller journey, rigorous testing should be applied to make sure it takes people where they want to go.
4. Best deal
‘Making costs go away’; there’s a cool call option.
Talk to suppliers and service providers about a Risk and Reward contract, where the supplier charges a cost per successful transaction. Compare that to your agent costs; the risks of running the system, the costs of maintenance and upgrade. The Risk and Reward model works to the best interests of both parties and offers attractive options for contact centre development. The supplier runs the risk of not receiving any revenue from a call–whenever the call fails to result in a transaction (for whatever reason). The upside for a supplier is ensuring a system is successful so they can benefit from the revenue from a successful call.
5. Automated service, with a smile
The overall guiding principle for contact centres has to be to handle incoming calls with the most suitable resource to deliver the answers that take care of the callers’ needs as categorically as possible. Automation frees up agents for calls where agents are really needed, not for routine repetitive tasks. Automation is great for repeated tasks, agents get bored with them; agents thrive on the satisfaction of helping people to resolve complex issues.
An automated call costs, on average, 20% of the cost of an agent-handled call. 20% of, not 20% off.
So automation is the key to keeping costs under control whilst delivering excellent customer service.
Say ‘cheese’.
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