Yes, it’s great to see old friends face to face again, but more importantly, it’s energising to see so many great vendors, buyers and influencers interested in what they have to show and tell. Sixty years ago, in his address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, President John F. Kennedy said “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

My observation about the C&CC Expo this year was that it demonstrated the reality of what we knew was possible ten to twenty years ago in terms of the SaaS business model and the benefits of the API driven economy. The show was dominated by the Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) community and those Value-Added Resellers offering their best choice CCaaS partner, combined with an ‘on the ground’ representation of that CCaaS providers marketplace.

What was so striking to me was how much the show layout itself represented the contact centre technology landscape. With the big CCaaS vendors occupying the premium space, the palm trees in the oasis next to the waterholes, and the specialist application vendors nestled closely around them. The more relevant and important the application vendor, the closer they were to the palm trees and the waterholes. The most relevant and interesting to visit were those application vendors that could help make sense of unstructured data. The less they could, the closer they were to the desert at the back of the hall.

Gartner estimates that unstructured data now represents an astounding 80 – 90% of all new enterprise data, and it’s growing 3X faster than structured data. Remembering JFK’s quote, now take a look at this article published in 2019 Insight-driven organisation | Deloitte Insights.

From an industry veteran’s standpoint, it feels like the future has now arrived. The beauty of SaaS delivering the ‘pay as you go’ CCaaS functionality, combined with a structured array of supporting AI driven application vendors, is that they all demonstrate a slightly different way that their product delivers the same solution to the same old set of problems that we’ve struggled with for decades.

What that means for ‘the contact centre tech’ customer’ is a huge amount of choice and a world of opportunity to refresh and upgrade operational functionality. The key point is that the tech’ on show at C&CC Expo this year gives every buyer (big and small) a chance to improve the engagement process (CX & EX) whilst at the same time, make a significant improvement in margin across the short, medium and long term.

If you need help in understanding what contact centre tech’ is the ‘best fit’ to improve your operating margins over the short, medium and long term, then get in touch. We’re here to help.

Am I fooling myself that nature will prevail or am I simply being lazy in not following the weekly routine of starting the lawnmower, begrudgingly filling it with petrol and pushing it up and down this green space telling myself it’s good exercise!?

I should succeed. Information is available, I have the vision and help is at hand. My daughter, whose family nickname by the way is Flower, works for the local Wildlife Trust. My wife, an abstract landscape artist, whose appreciation of colour is a gift she shares openly in her abundance of work. My options are numerous, and the more I’m asked to pay, the less it appears, my risk of failure.  Reading through the links that appear readily when I open the browser on my phone, I’m invited to spend thousands to take away my pain of failure. I could scrape up the field and returf with carefully selected grasses and wildflower seeds to match my soil type. Or maybe the lesser cost option of adding a layer of soil impregnated with appropriate seeds, again matched to my home ground.

Apparently, the problem I’ve failed to overcome in establishing my small contribution to biodiversity, is that wildflower seeds, however many times I scatter them over the autumn field, stand little chance of germination because they fail to compete against the established and dominant grasses. The most ecologically effective approach to solving this problem is to mow, scarify aggressively and plant yellow rattle, which suppresses the grasses and leaves space for wildflowers to grow.

So, when you mistakenly believe your budget is actually your business plan and you set forth with the best intentions to reduce your operating costs through automation, deploying BOTs where once there were voices, have a thought about my attempts at growing a wildflower meadow. Perhaps take the time to understand the full dynamics and nature of the ground you are seeding. Have a thought about taking the strategic long term aims, not tactical fixes. Think through your options of delighting your customers without necessarily spending thousands pulling up the old and laying down the new. Embrace the available help from familiar people who have proven experts in helping others and embrace the nature of what you already do to ensure that the new can grow and flourish.

Whatever you do, don’t simply let the grass grow and expect to get a wildflower meadow.

The summer break gives us time to reflect on the year to date. It’s always great to start with the successes and then the failures, or ‘opportunities’ as we are meant to label them. One such ‘opportunity’ that’s worth avoiding is that of ‘buyer’s remorse’, that sick feeling that starts in your stomach and rises through your chest, plants itself in your head and from that point on, haunts the conversation as soon as the subject matter is discussed.

Nothing presents itself better in this scenario than buying contact centre tech’. Why? Well, the answer is very simple and it’s all about context. That context is that buying anything, especially high value, and specifically, those that are complex and have multiple stakeholders, need a salesperson to sell them and contact centre tech’ is one of those things.

The scenarios witnessed all have one thing in common. The salesperson won. It’s like watching a gladiator against an unarmed soldier and in some cases, I’ve been reminded of that series of films that involved Predator and Alien, which perhaps reveals how long I’ve been around making these types of observations.

In all these procurement journeys, it was simply a case of one party going into play with more weapons, more skills and more technique than their combatant.

In that famous Monty Python sketch, ‘surprise’ is always an advantage. Although, as we know the element of surprise comes through knowledge and planning. Then comes the relationship development, even some personal social media interaction to cement the ‘advantage position’.

Tools? Well again, we all know what they are, but often fail to remember that salespeople these days are highly trained professionals who are targeted to win against people they have targeted to sell to.

Once the ‘trust position’ is established, out comes the ‘glitter and gold’ and of course, that’s all presented well to solve all the problems that the combatant has been sharing as the ‘relationship’ has been developing. Not that anything needs to have been mentioned. Typically, the professional sales team’s ‘intelligence unit’ have weaponry that gathers everything on the internet that your organisation has been putting out there, or even just checking something obvious like your company’s Trust Pilot scores and social media sites. These all are designed to reduce the risk of the sale not completing and the glitter and gold are deposited in the buyer’s jewellery box.

So, maybe take some armour and weapons of your own, make the tech’ purchasing journey an even contest and make sure what you end up buying is the gold you wanted.

Contact centres have faced numerous well documented pressures over the years, but have been on the leading edge in changing how organisations engage with customers. However, as we face ongoing global uncertainty there are three challenges our sector must face head on.

Staff attraction and attrition:

What was already a challenge, seems to have got a lot harder for many. The ability to recruit from a wider pool with homeworking is now a threat as it opens local resource to others. The role of the agent has become tougher, along with their line managers whose capacity to manage and connect with their team in person has been impacted by remote working.
  
In summary, the role is harder – the profile and skills have changed, the people are fewer and when you do recruit them it is harder to spend time with them to support and develop and therefore retain.

Channel Shift:

Customers expect to be able to make contact through a wider range of channels, so that is a wider profile of SLAs to manage. The challenge is to make sure the conversations are joined up if the customer decides to switch mid-flight and the user experience for both the customer and agent are right, otherwise it could contribute to agent attrition and customer defection.

Organisations may need to implement alternate channels to reduce the cost to serve, with increasing cost pressures and/or contact volumes (sector dependent) businesses need to take every opportunity to move customers to alternate channels where they may be able to be served more quickly and therefore at a lower cost.

Automation:

Silver bullet or the opportunity to infuriate your customers and drive complaints? It is all in the delivery and there are clearly opportunities to make an impact. Providing self-serve solutions has become expected by many customers and perhaps for some organisations the easiest/highest volume activities have already been through this process. Are the gains more marginal? Where should your digital assistant sit? Do they have enough of the answers to provide a service to the customer? and how is your “bot containment” looking?

There are so many questions arising from automation, but I think we could all point to at least one example, as customer, where we feel it has been done badly. A definite conclusion is that there is plenty of work to be done upfront before you plug in and switch on the bot.

Bringing it all together

In contact centres we are consistently in a data rich environment and many of the insights we need can be hiding in the data we already hold. That information could help you to both resolve issues and optimise performance. Indicators which illustrate agent or bot skill, knowledge and performance can be accessed, assessed and actioned. Technology can probably support 60-80% of the challenges if done right, but can cause just as many, including for your internal team, if done incorrectly.

Using technology to augment or support agents and first line managers must be a key priority, along with assessing how well the tools your teams use are working and if they can be better utilised. Ask yourselves the questions, should your bot be enabling your people and is your bot running out of talent and acting as a triage that simply infuriates your customers before they get to your people and indirectly impact attrition?

For others, the answer may just be that you simply need more people now to get the job done. Then there’s the challenge to secure a budget to recruit, along with the recruitment. The questions then must be around whether there is damage being done to your brand as a result of not providing the level of service that you want or need, against what your competitors are providing. Are you impacting your future customer base because of decisions that are being made now?

If you’d like to discuss innovative ways in which to overcome these challenges and improve your customer contact operations, just drop us a line.

So, with the exception of Apple who remain firmly focused on the provision of stylish and functional computing and communication hardware as well as consumer payments services, four of the Big 5 global tech’ companies are now in a position to help organisations (irrespective of purpose, size or location) to directly support their customers.

For those of us who still remember copper wires and tin boxes with flashing lights, stored in purpose-built rooms with locked doors (usually propped open to keep the places cool), this year may well be remembered as the year that heralded the beginning of ‘the big change’. The moment when the planet’s largest and most influential infrastructure, software and communication companies began the battle to manage and add value to the entire customer data journey.

Why do I think that?

Well, simply consider the global positioning of any of those big 5 tech’ giants in the customer management and contact centre space. The super mature Microsoft with its ever-evolving desktop applications, cloud infrastructure, messaging and communication platforms. Amazon providing global data services and from March 2017 has been offering its own successful CCaaS application. Then the new entrants. Google with their global cloud offering now with its own global comms and contact centre AI platform. We also have Meta, who, according to phone.com have provided the world’s top 4 downloaded apps of the last decade (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram), arguably making them the world’s largest human interaction business, finally acquiring Kustomer, the successful contact centre desktop unification application.

Behind these giants there is also activity. The continued success of Twilio as a seamless global comms platform and customer engagement application builder. As well as the ambitious Zoom, having failed to acquire global UCaaS and CCaaS provider Five9 back on October last year, they launched their own contact centre application as soon as February, with a European launch planned for some time soon.

Whilst the beginning of ‘the big change’ may be super exciting for any organisation on the planet who has customers to manage, the business environment for the old tin box manufacturers and the world’s established, historically copper based telco’s, the competitive environment looks just a little bit harder. In the context of ‘the big change’, what I read into that is innovation and change, certainly the prospect of collaboration and consolidation to deliver that. The collaboration plans of Genesys as a long-time global leader will be interesting to see play out, particularly with Zoom and Salesforce as investors in the Dec 2021 funding round.

Having lifted the bonnet of nearly 100 contact centre technology solutions and specialist applications since October 2019, when we began building the Contact Centre Panel Technology Network, we have seen some fantastic technologies and some great innovations. I am absolutely convinced we will continue to see more. We live in exciting times. Let’s see where ‘the big change’ takes us.

For the inside track on ‘the big change’ and what this means for your organisation, get in touch.

Here’s a quote from the BBC article in which Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that the development would help companies customise their experience and that “The best business experiences meet people where they are,”. He said at the announcement of the new service that “Already more than one billion users connect with a business account across our messaging services every week.”

So clearly customers are already using WhatsApp to engage with businesses, the change here is more about the “how”.

I do agree that customers want to be serviced where they are, the whole point of frictionless CX is making it easy and if I’m having other conversations in WhatsApp, then why not add another? The rules are clear, I must engage the company in the chat, they cannot engage me. The addition to a “Contact Us” page of a “WhatsApp Us” is a good way to support customers in that space.

From a delivery of service perspective, it can make the conversation harder as there is the asynchronous nature of a WhatsApp. As a customer I may start the chat now but not pick up the response for 3 hours, the conversation could continue for the best part of a week. This creates an interesting challenge for the business and the people within it though. Does it mean that multiple agents are going to interact with that supporter who could send messages across a timeframe that exceeds a shift or a working day? Contact centres have already been managing this situation for sure, but is the result an impact to efficiencies that servicing via WhatsApp is trying to achieve as another member of the team needs to familiarise themselves to respond to the last message? Or should we be setting a lower SLA on the follow up responses, seeing if the initial agent will be back to deal with it and leaving it for them to manage when back on shift?

I remember a time when first implementing e-mail solutions, in which trying to get the system to manage the stop and start of the clock to deal with e-mails “within the SLA” was a whole project strand. This would mean sometimes missing the reason behind the “customer” need and focusing too heavily on what the “client” had stipulated. The model was focused on one mail in and one mail out. Thankfully, technologies have moved forward now and the right blend of technology can ensure the initial phase of a conversation via messaging platforms can capture key information so the agent is best placed to resolve the query. For me, one of the best things with WhatsApp is the ability to switch from messaging to voice easily if needed all within the one channel.

‘Meta Platforms Inc (including Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp) have over 3.6 billion active users.’

Statistica

Whilst these are not-for-profit organisations created to provide affordable homes and to support local communities, they must ensure that support is of the highest possible standard at the most effective cost so that the maximum amount of income possible can be reinvested where it is needed most. However, as cost pressures increase how can housing associations ensure that operating costs of contact centres and service management are not eroding the monies required to maintain and build additional properties and give more families the opportunity to have a space of their own.

As England alone needs 340,000 new homes per year, including 145,000 social and affordable homes, there is significant pressure on providers with new residents to be considered, operating costs will increase because of inflation and rising wages and as the number of residents grows the cost to service them will too.

A number of organisations have turned to outsourcing as a means to support their residents, there are many benefits to this approach of using private sector expertise to deliver this including:

The automation conundrum

Working in an environment where customer contacts are often of high emotion brings challenges. Whether moving in or out of a property or if there is a repair that needs to be made, residents are more likely to be calling at a time of stress or need and who wants to speak to an IVR when feeling emotional, not me for sure.  So how do the opportunities to bring technology and automation reconcile with the imperative to deliver a personal service when support is needed? How can the use of technology ensure that those with the greatest need are attended to first?

Perhaps one solution is to get proactive, the use of insight and analytics solutions can unlock vital information and highlight trends within the housing stock, allowing housing associations to identify and remedy an issue before it even happens.

Where agent support is required it is key to ensure that they have delivered all the essential compliance and safety information that may be needed by a resident. Use an intelligent scripting and decision making tool, coupled with speech analytics, to make sure agents have done all that is necessary on the call, providing certainty for the organisation, the agent and the resident. Layer on top coaching tools and analytics and then your agent’s ongoing development is covered, whilst ensuring that key trend data is made available to the organisation. Having these processes in place means that all the right information is passed to engineer resources accurately the first time. This reduces the need for them to go back to a job, avoiding additional costs to the organisation and inconvenience to the resident.

So in summary, effective contact management can help deliver efficiency in scheduling and planning of work throughout your organisation and therefore improve service whilst reducing outlay. Plus feeding all repair data back into the analytics engine can then help with proactive scheduling of work to reduce risk.

Differentiated service

It should be considered that housing associations are the main provider of supported housing in England with 300,000 homes for older people and 115,000 for people who need extra support.

Outsourcing providers are dealing with vulnerable customers on a daily basis across all sectors and can bring both personal and technical expertise to support and develop services in this area. Access to voice analytics software in real-time can assist agents in identifying where additional care may be needed, more than a simple flag on a CRM to signify that a resident was vulnerable at the point of moving into a property. This data is linked to contact number and query routing technology to ensure that people at high risk are connected to the right support quickly. Technology can now pick up on vital clues that a resident’s situation may have changed and therefore they need to be considered as vulnerable.

Channel divergence

People are now communicating in more ways than ever before and often on multiple devices. Conversocial recently stated that: ‘Customer care teams today are 10 times more likely to resolve customer inquiries via a private channel, like Facebook Messenger and Twitter DM, than they were two years prior. What’s more, the rate of growth of conversations using private channels has accelerated to 20 times that of conversations using public channels (i.e. 900% vs 45%).’

When customers need help they should have the opportunity to interact in the channels that they feel most comfortable in, so whilst an e-mail is great for a lengthy dialogue after the event perhaps, a call has historically been the first action if you have an issue, but what about messaging platforms? These have become the key method of interaction in day to day lives and provide the opportunity to ease communication with residents. The ability to send a message and see it was received in WhatsApp, switch to a call or even a video call so that the contact centre agent can physically see an issue and in turn provide visual reassurance.

Who can you talk to about your options?

Having worked closely with a number of housing associations we have an excellent understanding of what is required to deliver excellent customer care at an affordable price. We have built a ‘best of breed’ network of over 140 contact centres and 50 technology providers, which makes us perfectly positioned to recommend and source the ‘right’ contact solutions for your business. We are entirely independent, so you know our recommendations are not driven by self-interest. Our selection process is managed by industry experts, so you will always be in safe hands.

For more information. Get in touch.

Sources:  

6M number from National Housing Federation –https://www.housing.org.uk/about-housing-associations/what-housing-associations-do/

With most markets experiencing significant post-pandemic growth and levels of opportunity at an all-time high, increasing your contact centre performance and sales conversion should be a key focus. Gaining insight into your contact centre staff conversations and behaviours can give you a head start on your competitors and help increase sales conversion rates, whilst increasing margin and revenue.

In this Technology Showcase Webinar, we will explore how analytics and quality management are helping businesses to transform their sales and service processes, enabling them to increase levels of operational performance and sales success.

The webinar will include an audience Q & A, where you will get the opportunity to ask the panelists question

Meet the panel

Jimmy Hosang: CEO, The Modular Analytics Co

Jimmy has had a long career in data consultancy. He is a former data scientist with expertise in next best action, machine learning and speech analytics. Prior to founding TMAC, his career had focused on driving innovation in a variety of roles at Lloyds Banking Group, Direct Line Group, John Lewis, Sainburys Argos and RBS. TMAC deliver affordable AI and ML SaaS solutions in customer engagement, customer service, coaching and marketing.

Natalie Calvert: Founder, CX High Performance

Natalie helps businesses to put their customers at the heart of their organisation through superb CX employee engagement programmes. Natalie has worked with, empowered and equipped more than 200,000 service & sales professionals and leaders across 100+ global organisations to deliver world class customer service during her 25 year career. Over the past 10 years Natalie has judged the UK Lloyds Bank National Business Awards for The Virgin Atlantic Customer Experience & Loyalty award. Natalie is also a Board Advisor to the National Business Awards.

Robert Hanrahan: Founder & CEO, miPerform Ltd

Robert describes himself as an ‘non techy’ tech entrepreneur. He is an explorer at heart and relishes new experiences and overcoming challenges, such as driving transformation in business or taking on new adventures in the mountains. Having previously worked in senior roles for Capita and Sky, he decided to follow his entrepreneur instinct and found MiPerform – a technology business that helps transform the way teams and businesses use data and technology to power their performance.

John Greenwood: Head of Technology & Payments, Contact Centre Panel

John is a payments specialist and leading authority in PCI DSS compliance and how this applies to customer contact centres and 3rd party service providers. He was the driver and lead content contributor to the official PCI SSC Information Supplement, published in late 2018. John is a technology subject matter expert with over 30 years’ experience working with and within the industry, he has a deep understanding of the technology vendor landscape as well as BPO and contact centre environments.

Topics for discussion

With economic forecasters predicting the largest growth period since the post-war boom, the importance of converting sales has never been higher, with consumers using a variety of communication platforms to engage with businesses, it can be very easy to miss out on a sale if your channels aren’t set up properly.  

As businesses prepare for growth and look to optimise their contact centre operations, selecting the right customer engagement technology solution has become crucial. Cost effective customer acquisition and a reduction in ‘cost to serve’ are both desirable goals but achieving them can be a challenge if you don’t have a true understanding of available technologies and their alignment to your existing environment.  

In the first of our series of expert panel discussions chaired by John Greenwood, Head of Technology, Contact Centre Panel, we look at the Bot and the differences in the technology underpinning operational performance. We will explore the difference in programmable products vs those that have minimal learning input before effectively replacing their human equivalents. The webinar will include an audience Q & A, where you will get the opportunity to ask the panelists questions.

Expert panel

John Greenwood: Head of Technology & Payments, Contact Centre Panel

John is a payments specialist and leading authority in PCI DSS compliance and how this applies to customer contact centres and 3rd party service providers. He was the driver and lead content contributor to the official PCI SSC Information Supplement, published in late 2018. John is a technology subject matter expert with over 30 years’ experience working with and within the industry, he has a deep understanding of the technology vendor landscape as well as BPO and contact centre environments.

Nathan Smith: Founder & MD, Gabba

Nathan is the founder and managing director of Gabba, an award-winning pioneer in digital and chatbot marketing. He has worked with some of the best-known names in the corporate world, including Microsoft and Siemens. Author of the book Social Media for the Legal Sector (Law Society Publications), he is passionate about sharing his knowledge to empower other organisations.

Chris Kellner: Global VP Sales & Partnerships, Digital Genius

Chris is responsible for leading business development, marketing and partnerships at DigitalGenius. DigitalGenius is the Ai platform that puts your customer support on autopilot by understanding conversations, automating repetitive processes to help guide your customers. The platform is powered by deep learning that understands your customers’ objectives, then drives automated resolutions through APIs that connect seamlessly to your own backend systems.

Natalie Calvert: Founder, CX High Performance

Natalie helps businesses to put their customers at the heart of their organisation through superb CX employee engagement programmes. Natalie has work with, empowered and equipped more than 200,000 service & sales professionals and leaders across 100+ global organisations to deliver world class customer service during her 25 year career. Over the past 10 years Natalie has judged the UK Lloyds Bank National Business Awards for The Virgin Atlantic Customer Experience & Loyalty award. Natalie is also a Board Advisor to the National Business Awards.

Topics for discussion

With economic forecasters predicting the largest growth period since the post-war boom, the importance of converting sales has never been higher, with consumers using a variety of communication platforms to engage with businesses, it can be very easy to miss out on a sale if your channels aren’t set up properly.  

As businesses prepare for growth and look to optimise their contact centre operations, selecting the right customer engagement technology solution has become crucial. Cost effective customer acquisition and a reduction in ‘cost to serve’ are both desirable goals but achieving them can be a challenge if you don’t have a true understanding of available technologies and their alignment to your existing environment.  

In the first of our series of expert panel discussions chaired by John Greenwood, Head of Technology, Contact Centre Panel, we look at the Bot and the differences in the technology underpinning operational performance. We will explore the difference in programmable products vs those that have minimal learning input before effectively replacing their human equivalents. The webinar will include an audience Q & A, where you will get the opportunity to ask the panelists questions.

Meet the panel

Louis Halpern: Chairman, Conversations with Ami

Louis is an ad tech veteran and is the driving force, along with fellow founder Lawrence Turner, behind Ami. He has in-depth insight and knowledge of the world of Ai and Bots. Meet Ami is Conversational Ai and contributes to clients’ competitive advantage by increasing customer service capacity, immediately freeing up resources and creating better outcomes. Louis is a big advocate of mentoring and also runs ‘Realise your potential Mentoring’, which support micro-business owners and corporate staff of all levels.

Natalie Calvert: Founder, CX High Performance

Natalie helps businesses to put their customers at the heart of their organisation through superb CX employee engagement programmes. Natalie has worked with, empowered and equipped more than 200,000 service & sales professionals and leaders across 100+ global organisations to deliver world class customer service during her 25 year career. Over the past 10 years Natalie has judged the UK Lloyds Bank National Business Awards for The Virgin Atlantic Customer Experience & Loyalty award. Natalie is also a Board Advisor to the National Business Awards.

John Greenwood: Head of Technology & Payments, Contact Centre Panel

John is a payments specialist and leading authority in PCI DSS compliance and how this applies to customer contact centres and 3rd party service providers. He was the driver and lead content contributor to the official PCI SSC Information Supplement, published in late 2018. John is a technology subject matter expert with over 30 years’ experience working with and within the industry, he has a deep understanding of the technology vendor landscape as well as BPO and contact centre environments.

Nathan Smith: Founder & MD, Gabba

Nathan is the founder and managing director of Gabba, an award-winning pioneer in digital and chatbot marketing. He has worked with some of the best-known names in the corporate world, including Microsoft and Siemens. Author of the book Social Media for the Legal Sector (Law Society Publications), he is passionate about sharing his knowledge to empower other organisations.

Topics for discussion