Last week I sat with a former client who said that the average sales cycle for them to sell their SaaS product has increased from 3 to 9 months. This reflects a general trend we have detected in conversation after conversation with both clients and partners. Across the board, we are finding that decisions are slowing, the criteria used within organisations to arrive at decisions are being changed mid-process and apparently settled courses of action get delayed deferred or de-railed by new initiatives.

So, why is this? Does it matter? And if it does, what can you do about?

Expect Delays

Lots of businesses – perhaps especially their customer-facing operations – have gone through a torrid 4 or 5 years of near-constant change. The pandemic, mass home-working, the ‘mass resignation’, surging inflation, supply chain disruption and war, both near and far from home, have all served to create massive disruption and demand rapid responses and decision making. However, this sort of forced decision-making and change is draining, both organisationally and at an individual level.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that organisations are less confident about their abilities to identify the right questions and make the right decisions about them. Uncertainty – fuelled in the UK and US by imminent elections – continues and now feels like a constant for all businesses. At the same time, genuinely profound challenges need to be addressed as organisations face the type of fundamental questions that just weren’t on the corporate agenda a few years ago:

• What will the real impact of AI be – and can we prosper from it?
• Is our business model tenable as we enter further into the climate emergency?
• Will our current customer experience approach and operational model be fit for purpose if we genuinely embrace support people with vulnerabilities?
• How can we exploit automation and granular customer insight if we can’t retain staff and deliver the customer service basics?

Maybe it’s no wonder the capacity and appetite to do so seems to be waning.

Delays may be fatal

Does delay matter? Well, you can argue that profound and existential decisions shouldn’t be rushed. Certainly, an ill-thought-out response to a developing challenge might be costly. But at a point when the pace of competitive challenge is quickening, unnecessary and unplanned delays just sap business confidence, revenue and profitability. Research conducted with senior decision makers showed that 89% believe that organisations taking too long to make decisions risk getting left behind (Orgvue Research).

What’s to be done?

When organisations are becoming slow and indecisive it might seem like there’s nothing individuals – even those in powerful positions – can do. However, there is scope to improve clarity about the decisions to be addressed, the basis on which to make them and your ability to deliver on them:

1) Open things up – rapid decision making won’t help if the range of choices is restricted or inappropriate. We need to understand the underlying challenge – be that a business difficulty or a new opportunity – and then frame the choices to be made. To do so, it may well help to open up that process. Get input from colleagues – at all levels – partners, suppliers and even through observing your rivals. There’s no shame in emulating smart people!

2) Define the decision-making process – once you are confident that you understand where your priorities lie, and the decisions required – about products, people, technology, investments or partnerships – then be very clear about how those decisions will be made. Who will be in the room, what are ranked considerations to be taken into account, what criteria will be used to make decisions – and measure the success of their implementation and effects.

3) Get some help from your friends – you – and your customers – know more about your organisation than anyone else. But getting third-party support and insights from trusted partners can be invaluable in:

• Crystalising your key business challenges (or describing them to a wider internal audience of stakeholders)
• Helping you assess options and possibilities, including the providers of services and technology that will be needed
• Building the assessment and measurement criteria you will need to frame, make and deliver key decisions

Where does Contact Centre Panel fit in?

We work with scores of clients and hundreds of partners every year, helping them make and carry out decisions that are fundamental to their organisational performance. We don’t have all the answers (or questions), but we would love to help understand the frustrations and delays you might be experiencing. Odds are, we have come across a similar scenario or challenge before – or know someone who has.

Let’s have chat and see if we can get things moving again. It could be your best decision of 2024 so far!

In the realm of customer service, contact centres play a central role. They have become a primary interface for brands, influencing customer experiences and shaping brand reputation. The role of the Contact Centre agent has evolved too. Today, they are true brand ambassadors, whose behaviour can have a direct impact on whether a customer chooses to make an initial or repeat purchase, or recommend the organisation to others.

However, empowering agents to provide the best possible customer experience is often easier said than done. Increasingly high consumer expectations, a raft of regulatory requirements and challenging market conditions – where many businesses are required to do more with less – make it harder for agents to deliver the desired level of service. Growing workloads, the pressure of juggling remote work, and the need to master multiple, disparate technology solutions only add to the challenge.

Against this backdrop, it is perhaps little surprise that agents sometimes struggle to show their human side. Brands need to find a way for their teams to deliver the friendly, empathetic, personalised and efficient service that underpins long-term customer relationships.

Let technology take the strain

It may sound ironic but the answer to helping agents be more human is technology. For example, increased levels of automation remove the burden and frustration of having to deal with mundane and repetitive enquiries, freeing up agents to focus on more complex or rewarding interactions; those that require a high degree of intuition, understanding and problem-solving.

With the right technology at their fingertips – and the skills required to get the most out of these solutions – agents can be transformed into ‘Super Agents’ or ‘Augmented agents’ who leverage automation tools, AI, and data insights to speed up resolution times while, at the same time, offer a personal touch. The impact of Augmented Agents extends far beyond immediate interactions to ultimately influence customer loyalty, brand perception and overall business performance.

Helping humans be more human: a five-point plan

To help agents interact with customers in a more human and authentic way, brands should focus on five key areas:

1. Look at ways to streamline technology. Disparate tools and solutions slow down the customer journey and are cumbersome for agents to use. Instead, organisations should explore platforms that support single desktops, and which integrate Knowledge Management and Agent Assist technologies to serve up the very latest information in real-time. This ensures agents never have to go searching for answers and can have total confidence in their decision-making capabilities.
2. Explore AI and automation tools. Customer enquiries are growing in number and cover a vast array of topics, so it is vital that simple, repetitive queries and tasks are dealt with automatically. Voicebots, chatbots and other self-service tools, as well as caller identification and verification (ID&V), are all ways to divert work from humans to machines. What’s more, as these tools speed up resolution times, customers benefit too. On a more sophisticated level, companies can deploy AI to analyse customer insights and assess how they might be feeling. Armed with this information, agents can adapt their tone or approach to deliver a much more empathetic customer experience. This is particularly useful when assisting vulnerable customers or handling complaints.
3. Gamification and Performance Management tools are an effective way to keep agents motivated, guarding brands against the high attrition rates that afflict so much of the contact centre industry. Gamification techniques make everyday tasks more fun and are proven to boost productivity and employee engagement. Brands should combine this approach with Performance Management tools, which provide managers with a clear picture of their top performers. This visibility is especially important in hybrid working environments.
4. Workforce Management. Investment here provides agents with far greater flexibility over their schedules – including over when they work from home and when they come in to the office – while at the same time optimising staffing levels. Not only does this enhance employee satisfaction it also ensures operational efficiency.
5. Technology is only one part of the puzzle; new solutions need to be complemented with comprehensive learning and development programmes that equip agents with the skills they need to deliver exceptional customer service. Feedback, training, coaching and other personal growth opportunities should be readily available and encouraged. Learning opportunities shouldn’t be limited to how to use different tools and touchpoints, they should also cover soft skills, so agents can seamlessly resolve the most challenging and complex of interactions.

As the face of the brand, it is vital that Contact Centre agents have the correct tools and sufficient time to deliver truly exceptional service to each and every customer. By prioritising the employee experience in this way, organisations can boost engagement and slash attrition rates while at the same time handle complex enquiries and deliver truly personalised service. Ultimately, by allowing agents to be more human, brands will see an uptick in customer satisfaction, loyalty and revenue.

Is your centre in need of a human touch?

Drop us a line. One of our humans would love to chat with you!

AI and the march to automation is a hot topic right now, with much being made of the gains that can be made through AI handling enquiries.

But the benefits of technology are perhaps being primarily considered in the context of larger operations, where the costs of servicing customers are easy to see.

What about the hidden contacts that organisations may be managing? The ones that are increasingly challenging to manage, that AI – for now at least – can’t deal with?

Information is power

Customers are better informed than ever before. They just need to spend a few minutes online to arm themselves with what they need before contacting you. From looking up reviews to seeking advice from social media groups on how other customers escalated a given complaint, or checking how regulations apply to your sector and how they should be applied in the context of their situation.

They may even know more about complaints to your organisation than some of your management team. Which means your responses need to be on point now more than ever.

Yet if former Dragons Den investor Piers Linney is to be believed, most contact centre activity will be automated by AI five years from now.

“There are undoubtedly times when speaking to a person is the only thing that will do.”

Realistically, nobody is denying that there are use cases that can be automated with better outcomes for customer, agent and organisation alike. Win-win. However, there are undoubtedly times when speaking to a person is the only thing that will do. And therein lies the risk of creating hidden contact centres in this futuristic AI-driven world. Indeed, they already exist.

What is a hidden contact centre and why do I need to worry about it?

In many organisations, contact centres already exist informally, even when they have bona fide real ones.

Groups of non-contact centre people are engaged in dealing with customers through calls, e-mails, chat or webforms, perhaps as part of their wider role. They are likely disbursed across multiple site locations or functions, handing off customers to each other and collaborating to resolve those queries.

Customers may be end users, other businesses or internal customers. The thing that unites them is that the queries are likely to be complex. And because it’s not their day job, everyone works a little harder to get the job done, sometimes at the risk of their other core tasks being delayed until the demand has passed.

Of course, none of this means these teams are doing a bad job in serving the customer. Processes may not be documented well, with best practice held in the heads – or languishing on the desktops – of team members, so they’re the best people for the job.

“The trouble with informal contact centres is that they aren’t set up to be responsive. Or have audit trails.”

But the trouble with informal contact centres is that they aren’t set up to be responsive. Or have audit trails. During holiday seasons cover may be limited and there is unlikely to be out of hours support for the customer. Reporting on contact volumes and contact types may not exist. Feedback loops for potential process improvement is probably dependent on the capacity in that team on a given week. And when servicing internal customers, inefficiencies may be magnified.

However, there may be limited opportunity for automation and self-service.

So maybe it is better to stay hidden?

Perhaps for some, ignoring all of this could be appealing. Especially if there are several “fractional” resources who are supporting and spreading the load. However, if those people are being taken away from their core roles, the decision (or lack of) not to address this could be a costly error. Those resources could be expensive for dealing with what in some cases may be low level queries. And not just in the time it takes them, but also unrecognised costs of double handling of queries, opportunity costs and even lost customers or lost revenue.

The first step is understanding if you have hidden contact centres. Speak with your people to understand what may be preventing them from getting core tasks done. If customer contacts, queries and complaints are part of that workload, perhaps it’s time to review and consolidate work to specialist staff who are set up to deal with these contacts.

Four red flags to watch out for:

1. Team attrition – perhaps because they’re not getting opportunity to do the role for which they were employed?
2. Customer attrition – are you seeing customers leaving you or not putting additional business in your direction?
3. Non contact centre customer contact handling – do you have a group of people who you may not term as contact centre, but they are all consistently doing a role dealing with customers?
4. Customer service levels aren’t matching your ambition – is it aligned to your values? Does it feel like a cost/burden?

If any of those resonate, then perhaps it is time to take time out and review whether you do, knowingly or otherwise, have a “contact centre” that could benefit from review or consolidation. To consider how this may benefit your people, your customers and ultimately your business.

What can you do about it?

First up, talk to people who understand the risks and opportunities of hidden contact centres. They’ll help you to decide on the approach that’s right for you, potentially with solutions you hadn’t considered. Whether you still want to keep activity within your team, or whether you need some additional help to provide increased coverage or flexibility.

For example, additional support and flexibility, including potential out of hours coverage, could improve services. You may not need dedicated resource, but the availability of someone to engage with your customers in conversation and support them at the right point in time may reduce the burden on your team during core hours.

If recruiting contact centre staff is a challenge for you, and managing and developing them is a further item on your worklist that you struggle to get to, it’s almost certainly time to seek guidance on how to address that.

And if you want to keep your ‘hidden contact centre’, it could be a smart move to examine your technology set up. Is it making it as easy as possible for your team? That doesn’t mean that everything could or even should be automated. However, implementing systems that enable omni-channel support – so that all details of the conversation can be easily linked and customers can skip across channels – will make it easier for both you and your customers.

“Technological developments over recent years mean that you could be able to improve life for your people and your customers.”

Contact centres take all kinds of forms. They can be managed in many ways and no one size fits all when it comes to dealing with customers. That’s why there are big in-house contact centres, hidden contact centres, and many different specialist outsourcers who deal with specific sectors or tasks – and often in ways that can give a competitive edge. Knowing which approach will help you to gain your competitive edge is critical.

Importantly, technological developments over recent years mean that you could be able to improve life for your people and your customers, reducing the impact on your business and the cost of servicing your customers. But wholesale automation is not the answer for all. And may never be, five, ten or many years from now.

Want to chat further?

Drop us a line. A problem shared is a problem halved and we love to share our expertise, whether you’re a client or not.

Traditionally, contact centres have relied on a somewhat impersonal approach to assigning agents to clients. This method, often arbitrary and based on immediate agent availability, overlooks the potential of personalised interactions. Such a lack of customisation can result in missed opportunities for both agents and clients, leading to inefficiencies and general dissatisfaction. Personally, I think it’s time to move beyond this one-size-fits-all strategy and embrace the uniqueness of every individual involved.

Embracing the power of AI and Human connection

The integration of AI into your contact centre offers a promising solution. By analysing vast amounts of data, including historical interactions and behavioral patterns, AI can intelligently match clients with the right agents. This strategic pairing goes beyond mere transactions, aiming to create meaningful relationships where both parties find value and understanding. It’s about rekindling the human element in every conversation, ensuring that each interaction is not just efficient but also genuinely engaging.

A smarter approach

Technology should enhance, not diminish, human connections. Every individual has a unique mosaic of needs, desires, and dreams. Our mission is to foster meaningful work by appreciating and understanding this individuality By acting as matchmakers, we ensure that agents find joy and meaning in their work, leading to more positive and successful engagements with clients.

For agents, this approach transforms each workday into an opportunity for meaningful interactions. For clients, it ensures a more personalised and less stressful experience. And for leaders, this synergy between well-matched agents and clients not only streamlines workforce management but also enhances team engagement and success, contributing to the overall achievement of organizational goals.

The competitive advantage: valuing people

In a market where differentiation is key, the unique personalities of our people, combined with innovative matching technology, stand out as the competitive advantage. This focus on positive engagement and deep human connections within the corporate environment leads to enhanced profitability and a distinctive market position.

Final thoughts

The contact centre industry is poised for a significant transformation through the integration of AI, with a focus on enhancing human connections. By moving away from impersonal assignments and embracing a more strategic, data-informed approach, we can significantly improve agent satisfaction, client experiences, and overall success rates. Our commitment at Bestpair is to lead this change, ensuring that every interaction is not only successful but also truly enjoyable, reaffirming the undeniable value of meaningful connections in the modern workplace.

If you’d like to find out more, get in touch.

Are there really no bad ideas? This age-old question plagues organisations that are trying to innovate while managing realistic resources and budgets. None of us want to stifle creativity—we’re all encouraged to think creatively and bring new ideas. As we alluded to above, maybe it’s the execution of ideas that results in undesirable outcomes. 

Distributed and Contact Centre Panel (CCP) recently teamed up to help more organisations turn their ambitious ideas into reality. Any idea is worth exploring, but without proper execution, outcomes are often lacklustre at best and failures at worst. In a tech landscape where 70% of transformation projects end up failing according to McKinsey, it’s critical to get the strategy and process right at the onset.  

We want to set business leaders on the best path possible toward successful digital transformations. With our combined expertise and years of experience in helping companies implement change across industries and geographies, we’ve compiled the guiding principles that will be foundational to any large-scale technical project. 

Be clear on strategy and your “why” at the start 

Nobody sets out to do a bad job. The execution of a project—especially in an outsourced environment—is complex, so it may not be a specific decision that halts progress, but a situation where people fail to make a decision, or don’t work through the priorities and therefore are trying to work with limited resources.  

Distributed Founder, Callum Adamson shares, “Make sure you’re in love with the problem you’re trying to solve, not the solution you think is needed. I see people thinking, ‘I’ve got this great idea for an app,’ rather than ‘This problem needs to be solved.’” Clearly defining the priorities of a project will ensure that everyone is working towards implementing the agreed upon change. When resources are limited, there’s no more important factor to a project than knowing exactly how it will affect the organisation once the project is finished. In order to better track the impact of your change implementation, make sure to identify: 

• Key KPIs that will be measured before and after the project 
• Goals for those KPIs in order to track against expectations 
• Teams that will be affected directly by the transformation 
• Stakeholders who deeply understand the problem you’re trying to solve 

Make sure you have the right resources dedicated to the project 

Change is inevitable in any organisation and if we fail to acknowledge this then those organisations are destined to fail. Opportunities to deliver additional customers, revenue, or margin are dependent on successfully implementing change. The step that makes something a “bad idea” is potentially the decision to not apply the appropriate level of thinking and resources to the project.  

Once you understand the parameters of your project and exactly how the change will affect your organisation, it’s time to set out for the right resources. Good ideas become bad ideas when the levels of critical thinking and creativity don’t match the complexity of the project. Make sure there’s enough time, budget, and talent dedicated to the transformation project in order to move forward completely. If there isn’t, be realistic about what you can accomplish with what you have, and flex your creativity to stretch those resources in ways that will help your team make more progress. 

 At CCP, nearly a decade of work has been dedicated to honing in on connecting organisations to the best resources for their projects. CCP Founder Phil Kitchen shares, “We always see that the best fit organisations to support our clients or network have three key components to their offer. These are:  

1. Solution, that the needs are clearly understood and the partner is aligned to the same objectives  
2. Commercials, ensuring sustainability for all engaged to deliver a win/win outcome  
3. Cultural alignment, to ensure open and transparent communications and delivery

Leverage the right talent at the right time

What truly needs to be considered when making any critical change is that there needs to be the necessary capacity to deliver change whilst managing the day-to-day goals. Impactful change can only be achieved with impactful teams, and sometimes those teams need additional expert perspectives and skill sets in order to more holistically drive a project forward. 

 This is where leveraging external talent becomes the key to driving innovation at growing organisations that are moving quickly while simultaneously implementing ambitious transformations. We have a deep understanding that success can’t be achieved in a silo. In order for internal teams to excel in their “zones of genius,” they need the right support to enable an open, empowering environment for better productivity and workflows. 

Freelancers make up 40% of the digital workforce today. That’s a tremendous amount of talent that can potentially help organisations shift their businesses through successful transformation projects. This talent remains largely untapped today, even as business leaders become more open to the idea of leveraging talent ecosystems outside their own companies. With this leap comes global perspectives, remote working practices, and increased productivity that can be unlocked with the right talent strategy. 

We’re building the future of tech transformation—join us 

CCP and Distributed are partnering to help organisations achieve greater change at faster speeds—without compromising on quality. Keeping this balance is important to us because we know it’s important to business leaders worldwide. As we continue our work, see how good ideas can become great ideas when the right talent teams can contribute their unique skills sets and expertise to your projects. 

Some people love contracts, others see them as a “document of last resort”.

In the world of customer management / customer experience outsourcing, most people responsible for contracts, both clients and outsource service providers, will aim to be familiar with the service schedules of their contract, but through absorbing the key requirements and mechanisms into their day-to-day working lives. And they will rarely need to reference the original agreement.

Though that isn’t necessarily the way things work. 20 years ago, I had a client who would fly over from Paris once a month with an entire contract printed out, filling a lever arch file crammed into her work bag!

The vast majority of outsourcing contracts follow the same, familiar pattern; three years’ initial term, with the easy potential to extend for a further two. From a buyer’s perspective this offers the reassurance of five years’ clarity about who is going to provide vital customer management services, how and – subject to the vagaries of any cost of living allowance (COLA) measures in the contract to address inflation – confidence over the costs of those services. Equally, this contractual clarity and reassurance allows outsource service providers to better plan, invest and manage their business.

When contracts fail

Historically, this model of contracting tends to fall over when one of two things happen:

1. The parties fall out and that commercially vital relationship collapses (and that’s why clients need to be very circumspect about the outsourced service provider they select in the first place!); AND/OR
2. Changes in the nature of customer demand and behaviour challenge or undermine assumptions in the contract. Especially when transformational metrics and goals have been embedded into a contract, or when service providers are offering a total cost of ownership (TCO) bundled pricing model, a shift in consumer behaviour and their interactions – the volume of contacts, when they are made, using what channels – may serve to potentially undermine the operational and commercial basis of the contract.

Without naming names, those of us in the contact centre and CX industry can think of major outsourced service providers which bet big on their ability to reduce customer contact through things like enhanced self-service tools, but failed due to other, external factors. These drove up unanticipated demand – and the providers ended up with lengthy, loss-making contracts on their hands.

With the best will in the world relationships can always sour and founder, of course. However, we are all capable of learning from experience (at times!) and both seasoned clients and service providers have a broad understanding that there are caveats and limits to what providers can commit to in the face of what Harold Macmillan reputedly referred to as “events, dear boy, events”.

In which case the ‘3 + 2’ model of a well-crafted contract, featuring service schedules that balance a grasp of what’s feasible and achievable with meeting clients’ customer experience ambitions, seems fit for purpose. Doesn’t it? Maybe not.

So, what’s wrong with the old 3 + 2 model?

Here’s what’s wrong – for years the biggest risk and disruption factor for contact centre operations came from unmanageable and unanticipated demand. But now the greatest unpredictability comes from supply; how brands, outsourced service providers and their contact centres go about meeting that demand.

The increasing pace of change is a cliché, but it’s also true.

5 or even 3 years ago who could have accurately foreseen the rise of accessible, highly accurate translation engines that have made the need for multilingual staff in non-voice setting largely redundant in many operations? Today, AI-driven, synthetic voice tools that can deliver quality natural language conversations aren’t yet ready to be operationalised, but by 2026 they may well be. Until recently, accessible technologies that could accurately classify and summarise contacts without any human intervention, or the ability to reliably (and increasingly accurately) present advisors with the sort of guidance and information they need to help with precisely the sort of contact they are handling sounded like the stuff of contact centre managers’ fever dreams. No longer.

It’s hard to tell what the next few years will bring us in terms of time saving and resolution-enhancing technologies, but one thing that’s certain is that committing to a traditional fixed-model outsourced contact centre arrangement now feels like a risky undertaking.

So, what’s the solution?

Should clients do nothing and either:

1. Not outsource key functions when their internal and market analysis says that that’s what’s needed; OR
2. Let outmoded contractual terms roll over, fearful of committing to changes that can’t be undone and will expose them to worse problems down the line?

And if you’re an outsourced services provider faced with a wall of business-draining indecision from current and potential clients, what should you do?

3 points for your consideration

Clients:

1. If you have, or are about to appoint, an outsourced services provider then you’re setting out to build and test a crucial relationship. Ideally, you’re doing so with a provider which will share with you the learnings from them having undertaken similar journeys with a variety of different clients before. If your partner dependably delivers an operational service with an honest and customer-focused approach, then they may well be the right partner for the next stage; exploiting the potential of AI & ML-based technologies (whether the initiative is taken by you as a client, or the provider comes to you with their chosen technologies).
2. We all know it’s hard, but outputs – measures of positive customer experience, total cost of ownership, benchmarked service standards – are the most robust metrics to base your provider’s contractual quality of delivery on. Outsourced service providers increasingly understand that ‘more of the same’ contracts won’t meet the market’s needs.
3. And if your current standards of customer service and delivery are really poor, either through an existing, failing outsourced provider or an in-house solution you can’t fix, then it’s better to settle for a new solution and a commercial arrangement that’s less than fully optimised and future-proofed, but does ensure better experience for you and your customers.

Service Providers:

1. You may have had years of experience in innovating operationally and technically. Now’s the time to think more – or think afresh – about being commercially innovative. You have incredible insight through talking to clients – and their customers – day in and day out.
2. Do you need to re-orientate your business model so that you are better able to cope with the potential impacts and risks of clients being with you for shorter, or less predictable period? Or can your application of technology to your and your clients’ mutual benefit help ensure longer relationships, even with less contractual commitment?
3. For some service providers, more radical change may be required. If you need to identify and nurture genuine transformational partnerships, in place of ‘vanilla’ static service contracts with clients, then that will require a change in proposition, go to market strategy and your selection of potential clients.

What do you think?

What are your thoughts on the future of the ‘3 + 2’ contracting model? Do you think we’re thinking along the right lines, or have we underestimated the enduring value of proven, traditional approach? Whether you’re a client or service provider we’d love to hear what you think.

And if you’re facing challenges designing the right sort of commercial arrangement for outsourcing – either as a client or service provider/BPO – we’re here to help.

I’ve spent the last 25 years working in contact centres and in a conversation earlier this week with another long standing, highly experienced person we agreed that many of the issues that we were dealing with 15 or 20 years ago are still challenges that face our industry today. When I was on the phones supporting a mobile phone network, I can remember receiving transferred calls that just weren’t for me to deal with. 

For instance, the Sales team pushing something through to Service when the issue was that a handset order hadn’t gone through correctly. Knowing that they weren’t going to make a sale to someone who had already purchased, Sales decided that it was now a service call.  I’m sure we can come up with a hundred examples if we wanted to.   

However, we can’t change what happened in the first half, we can only change the result through playing smarter in the second.   

If the process was broken can automation help fix it?

There is a potential for a law of unintended consequences; you may not get what you initially signed up for (ask Harry)…. If the process is broken and you automate it then you could just generate more improper transfers at greater speed, as the bot just powers through. Not the fault of the bot, it was just doing as it was told.

If someone is getting questions that sit outside of their skills then they could be spending time searching for an answer or be passing the call on unnecessarily, as a result CX suffers. But how to catch such issues before they are the talk of Feefo and Trustpilot?

Increasing QA sample size and use of auto QA tools has to be an opportunity to identify issues quickly and make critical adjustments to the process, training of the agent and or the bot.

What are the root causes of poor CX? 

Automation of QA and enabling first level managers to identify and address coaching opportunities more quickly is only half of the story.   

Access to more data and insights allows businesses to better understand customer effort and the issues creating friction in customer journeys, issues which could be driving churn, creating grumpy customers and maybe unhappy agents who are then more likely to attrite.   

Whilst we in the industry don’t like talking about AHT anymore, customers do talk about how long it took for their issues to be dealt with. The age old Wait Time, and Hold Time are still important to customers (they are important to the person paying for the contact centre too). Root cause analysis remains a key opportunity to identify where AHT can be reduced and agent workflows can be optimised.   

Customer surveys are great, but really they are much better when the meta data from the call, the quality score and the survey feedback are all joined together.  Customer dissatisfaction data should be an opportunity to identify training needs and make changes, it helps when you have the full context of the interaction in one place.   

If the customer had to contact more than once then it becomes even more critical to link all that data together, identify the processes that are most likely to generate multiple contacts and consider how you can remove those additional contacts driving customer and employee experience.

“Take action to reduce the number of improper transfers”

There are typically 3 key drivers of improper transfers, the key is to take action to reduce them.  I’m sure we’ve either all caused issues through the following or have dealt with the consequences of them during our careers.   

• Workflows not being properly configured: Often, Contact Centres have to work with legacy systems that make changes hard. And unfortunately, customers have a habit of not following the flows that were created when the business was established, or a new product or service has impacted the model.
• Agents not being properly trained: Sometimes you’ll be short on time, it happens – maybe there was an issue with recruitment and the service launch date couldn’t be moved, so what happens? Someone takes a decision to reduce an element of training perhaps, or the brief wasn’t properly understood.
• Inefficiencies in the Tech stack: When systems have been pieced together there can be gaps, something doesn’t quite work as planned, that new tariff hasn’t been loaded correctly, the link to the courier page isn’t working.

What can you do about it?  

AI powered insights enable faster understanding of issues, patterns can be seen more quickly, improvement areas can be identified and actioned before the end of the shift, not the end of the month.

1. Identifying coaching opportunities and actioning them quickly can make a material difference. Issues with processes not being completed right now may lay dormant for months, years even?  Consider change of tenancy processes, the details of the tenant or a meter read may be entered incorrectly now which doesn’t present as an issue until the customer receives their first bill (smart metering should prevent this, but what if the start date was captured incorrectly?).
2. Use of screen capture to see what actually happened, what the agent saw and therefore advised the customer can be critical to identifying system issues, or issues with accuracy of information in the knowledge base.  These are key considerations and opportunities for organisations to be more informed in their decision making.   

“If things are going well now, that is a reflection of the work that went in 6 months ago”

The performance being delivered by your contact centre team is going to reflect the work you have done previously to ensure that you have the right people, processes, and technology.   

Sometimes you may make the wrong choices, the best you can do is play what is in front of you, keeping an eye on the horizon so that things are less likely to come as a surprise. The thing is that through using technology and AI our ability to see what is on the horizon is much improved versus what it was 20 years ago.    

I was speaking with a partner who has seen a 48% increase in QA audit deliver a 30% reduction in AHT.  They’ve used the insights from the QA to reduce improper transfers, improve processes, provide better training for agents and ensure the tech stack is aligned.   

Now I know people don’t like talking about AHT but I’m guessing we’d all be happy to talk about the benefits that could be delivered in improved employee and customer experiences, reduced wait times, more investment time, lower agent attrition, reduced recruitment and training costs, increased customer retention and of course, that all means reduced costs to serve and improved profit margins.   

Need help finding a new star player? 

Harry Kane may be gone, but it already looks like Tottenham are marching on under Ange Postecoglou – where will they finish this season I wonder?

We’d love to chat with you about how you are planning on getting the most out of your team this year and delivering a winning performance.

In the past 12 months we have seen rapid acceleration of automation and AI solutions. However, when it comes down to dealing with customers, human relationships still have their place.

We are all customers and there are times when we just want to get something done quickly. In banking terms that may be a balance or transaction check, give me the information that I need fast and simple. It could be a renewal of your insurance or to check where an order is.

But what if the balance isn’t what you expected or you have a duplicate transaction? The renewal price has changed dramatically, or the order isn’t arriving today after all, and you’ve taken a holiday day to wait for it? Well, you probably want to speak with someone, you want understanding and empathy. Another human to say to you it has all been sorted and there is nothing to worry about, to apologise – and mean it.

So, it is likely there will always be some form of need for human intervention in the process.

People determine the processes 

AI can determine when a customer is likely to need to make contact based on analysis of various data points and the creation of insights. It can run tasks/journeys to make proactive contacts at the right times based on customer lifecycles.

However, it has not reached the point of autonomy yet where it can decide what the CX should look like, it can give the tools but you still need to direct the effort, so people remain key.

Are your automation objectives aligned?

 Few outsource providers have the technology inhouse to satisfy the needs of their clients directly, few clients have the experience to implement AI themselves. As an outsource community of CX specialists you have the opportunity to shape the service delivered and the enable your clients to deliver better outcomes for their customers, differentiate their brand and help them either grow their business or reduce costs.

There is no point putting your head in the sand; this change is here, it is happening now. To say “it’s coming and we will get to it” is too little, too late.

The best thing that you can do is ensure that you have the right partners to enable you to deliver the changes that your client needs and the right commercial agreement with your client to ensure that your business is sustainable.

“If you aren’t talking to your clients about AI and automation someone else will be.”

Those who simply try to protect their headcount will find that they are on the losing side when it comes to contract renewal. Don’t wait until renewal comes along to talk to clients about innovation and cost saving, they will see straight through this!  

There are benefits to automation that can support your business

We have seen massive change through homeworking during the pandemic, increased attrition, increased salary costs due to inflation and pressure on clients to manage costs as a result of reduced customer spend due to a hardening economy.

We have seen increasing amounts of work being placed offshore, however there remains the risk that other labour markets become increasingly competitive and then costs will start to rise again.

Customers expect automation for certain tasks, they crave it, so you need to be able to provide solutions for your clients.

“Choosing the right technical partner could be critical to your future success”

As a business you need to ensure that you have:

• Sustainable solutions that work for you
• Alignment of objectives with your clients
• Technical delivery partners that you can rely on and trust to deliver on your behalf

Remember you get out what you put in. Be sure to properly resource any implementation project, scope realistically, ensure you have a clear business case, deliverables, testing and sign off processes, choosing the right solutions is only half of the story.

Want to know more?

Join Us for our webinar on September 14th, when we will be discussing in more detail the opportunity that AI offers to the outsource community.