Cloud-based solutions are likely to dominate the future
Before COVID-19, the vast majority of contact center workers turned up to an office every day where colleagues and managers surrounded them. The future of work is likely to look very different and may take on one or more of the following characteristics:
- most people working from home at least some of the time
- some people working from home most of the time
- split shifts that mean fewer staff members are in the office at once
- some workers going back to the office more or less full time.
This will create a strong need for flexible and agile systems that can support workers and managers regardless of their location. Cloud is the only infrastructure option that will deliver the kind of flexibility and agility required to provide a consistent and engaging experience for all staff members. It improves the availability of applications and infrastructure and removes the burden of management from the IT team.
Key benefits of a cloud-based contact center environment
- Cost savings
Cloud-based infrastructure removes the need to spend capital investments on infrastructure in the office and in people’s homes, should they choose to (or be required to) work from home. With a cloud-based environment, the physical location of staff members becomes irrelevant, as everyone can access the same systems and applications regardless of where they’re sitting.
- Security
When employees work from home, the physical layer of security that was provided when they worked in the office is no longer present. This creates a potential security risk for organizations that must be addressed. Contact centers tend to have a great deal of valuable information, including credit card details and purchase history; this information must be protected according to the Privacy Act and other relevant legislation. Cloud-based contact centers environments, or contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS), include built-in security features that maintain data protection, giving businesses peace of mind that valuable customer data will be safe.
- A consistent customer experience
Customers interacting with the contact center need to have a consistent experience regardless of whether the employee is in the office or working from somewhere else. That means information must be available at the employee’s fingertips, and the business must be able to deliver a seamless experience.
Contact center agents don’t just need a phone and a customer relationship management (CRM) system to work from home. They also need access to knowledge bases, resources, colleagues, and coaches. All of these elements of the contact center ecosystem feed into the customer experience. Cloud-based systems put that information at the fingertips of all employees no matter where they’re working from, delivering a consistent experience.
- Transparency and an engaged workforce
When employees work from home, it can be difficult to tell whether they are being productive, focusing on work, and delivering strong customer experience. Using a cloud-based system with voice, text, and desktop analytics capabilities drives detailed insights on what employees are doing. It can reveal when employees are engaged with customers versus when they’re browsing websites, doing online shopping, or perusing social media platforms. It can also show areas where contact center agents could benefit from additional training, for example.
With a cloud-based contact center solution, artificial intelligence-based metrics can also be used to measure employee performance not just in terms of traditional productivity metrics but also in terms of the impact of customer-centric behaviors.
- Better coaching for employees
Employees working from home don’t have the benefit of a nearby manager who can listen to their calls and provide advice and coaching in real-time. This means coaching has fundamentally changed because it can no longer leverage the social capital that is created when coaches and agents interact face-to-face. This is a critical area that needs to be addressed when employees work from anywhere. Workforce engagement and automated quality measurement solutions help enterprises identify the key improvement areas that need coaching.
With artificial intelligence (AI)-based metrics, managers can see if agents are listening and being empathetic if they’re acknowledging loyalty, and if they’re building strong relationships. This approach makes it easy to see which agents would benefit from additional training and which agents are the top performers. Gamification can help deepen employees’ commitment to ongoing improvement. And these same tools must be available to employees in the office or at home to ensure consistency.
- A technology-proofed contact center
A cloud-based solution can help technology-proof the contact center so that it can continue to provide exceptional experiences even as technology evolves, without having to invest in expensive, monolithic, on-premise upgrades. For example, the collaborative nature of work is expanding to include the customer. In this evolving field, the cloud is the linchpin that makes collaboration, communication, and availability possible.
- Digital twins to help employees be productive from day one
Some new employees may never have seen the office. Working from home for these people can mean that some things take twice as long. A digital twin, which acts as a virtual assistant, can help walk these employees through customer interactions, guiding them on the next best action so that they can deliver an excellent customer experience right from their first day.
From monitoring employee desktop activity to automating mundane tasks, digital twins participate in every key event in the employee’s day.