Imagine you are a senior executive in a major company, and someone tells you that two out of every five people stop doing business with your company because of a poor contact centre experience.
This is the reality. A poor contact centre experience has a direct impact on a company's bottom line - and as the figure above shows, this impact is enormous.
Now, consider the industry yardstick that it costs five times as much to gain a client than to retain one, and the real cost, including opportunity cost, of losing a customer.
The contact centre has become the primary interface for customers - and for companies wanting to reach existing and potential customers.
Empirical research conducted by Genesys involving 4 200 consumers has showed that:
* 67% of consumers are frustrated by long hold times.
* 57% are frustrated by IVRs (interactive voice response systems) with too many or incorrect options.
* 52% are frustrated by having to repeat information they've already provided.
* 76% of consumers feel companies are pushing them to use self-service systems instead of talking to live agents.
* 66% react negatively when they feel they are being pushed to use self-service.
* 84% of consumers would actually like to hear about cross- and upselling opportunities.
* Consumers are increasingly interested in using communication channels other than voice, with e-mail, Web chat and SMS the primary new channels. Of these, 90% of consumers would rather use e-mail to engage with a company rather than the phone. And one in four consumers expect a response to an e-mail query within an hour.
The contact centre has become the primary interface for customers - and for companies wanting to reach existing and potential customers.
Peter Flanagan is director of Intelleca.
However, the fact is that today's contact centres are more geared to voice than to non-voice channels. Many contact centres can offer non-voice options, but then the customer experience is fragmented and uneven.
In addition, management does not have a common view and cannot gain insight into or scrutinise reports on contact centre activities - in particular there is no ability to slice and dice data, or go down to any kind of granular level.
The requirement for customers to engage with an organisation in a consistent manner, and for management to gain control of and gain insight into contact centre performance are among the key reasons the contact centre suite has emerged as the most strategic response to these diverse but linked requirements.
A contact centre suite offers the best of all worlds:
* From the customer interaction perspective, it permits customers to engage via voice, e-mail, SMS, Web, fax or other, newer channels, as and when they emerge.
* From a management perspective, it provides a common, unified view of the performance of the contact centre, across all channels, in real-time, and historically, by day, by week, by agent, by subject area, by average hold time, call duration and much more.
* From an agent view, it provides a common interface to agents, self-service, automation and subject experts, with a unified interface for consumers. All consumer details are passed on to the next agent, removing the necessity for restating or rekeying of personal details.
* Of vital importance, it really doesn't matter if a consumer engages via live agent or IVR ... the experience is the same, but IVR can reduce holding time by 66% and dramatically enhance the customer experience.
The contact centre suite has emerged as the best possible way of merging the traditionally disparate requirements of consumers and management.
In the next Industry Insight in this series, I'll look at the way the contact centre suite has evolved to become dynamic: because the dynamic contact centre suite is the next step in superior customer service and enhanced management capabilities.
* Peter Flanagan is director of Intelleca.
Share