Contact centre technology has changed the nature of customer experience (CX). It has reduced the number of agents needed in a contact centre at any one time, improved customer experience by decreasing wait times and reduced the number of errors in a contact centre – to name a few.
Moreover, it has transformed how agents connect with customers and solve their problems. Despite these developments, it is important not to forget the human touch when implementing contact centre CX solutions.
Human agents bring many benefits to a contact centre by:
- Delivering personalised experiences to customers: Human agents can measure and respond to customers’ emotions with empathy and understanding, which is a significant factor for improving customer loyalty.
- Handling complex inquiries: A robotic or virtual agent can only take a customer issue so far. If the customer has a complex issue, they will need to speak with someone who can deliver a specialised solution.
- Building relationships with customers: When human agents work with customers to deliver a flexible solution, they foster the relationship between the customer and your brand.
Ultimately, using human agents in your contact centre can improve customer experiences and increase loyalty. Here are our recommendations for balancing the human touch with new technology.
Listen to what your customers say
You have a difficult job balancing your customers’ needs with introducing technology into your contact centre, especially given every industry and every customer is unique. While adopting new technology is ideal for keeping your business ahead of the competition, you will fall short if you do not listen to your customers and consider their perspectives.
In some cases, customers may be unhappy with your changes. They might not like navigating Interactive Voice Response (IVR) before speaking with an agent. In other cases, they may appreciate the efficiency of new technology but still want to speak with a human when they need assistance.
The key here is to pay careful attention to what customers have to say by listening to their feedback. Of course, you cannot please everyone. But, when you take customer feedback on board, you balance deploying new technology without losing the human touch.
Let customers choose their journey
Not all of your customers will have the same idea of what convenient and great CX looks like. Part of putting the human touch into your contact centre is providing people with choice.
Take AI, for example. It has proved to be valuable for contact centres by automating tasks such as frequently asked questions (FAQs). Customer service delivered by AI saves your business money and time by freeing up agents to work on complex inquiries.
However, just because AI delivers great benefits does not mean it can wholly replace human agents. For some, a chatbot will feel like enough to address their issue, and the ability to send instant messages from their phone or laptop will feel convenient. Others may prefer to speak with a person.
In considering these scenarios, you need to find the balance between AI and human agents. By offering both options, you can provide the best possible customer experience while still reaping the benefits of AI.
Optimise your tech stack to smoothen the customer experience
To get more from contact centre technology solutions, you may need to review your current tech stack and remove processes that no longer serve your business. When agents have to operate within several disconnected programs, it wastes their time and hinders their ability to provide smooth customer service.
For example, if your contact centre or call centre software does not integrate with your CRM, you might consider adopting a solution combining all of the platforms your agents need. You should also listen to agent feedback on the effectiveness of the technology. After all, they are the people speaking directly with the customers and will have heard customer complaints if they were unhappy with an automated process or felt like the agent took too long to find relevant information.
Carefully consider new technology before deployment
Deploying too much automation creates sterile CX, disrupts the human touch in your contact centre and hinders your ability to provide good customer service.
It may feel exciting at first to implement trends such as AI and chatbots. But, these technologies will not deliver to your expectations if you do not consider their role in your contact centre. Here, you will need to consider how technology and the human touch work together.
Moreover, technology does fail sometimes. In those cases, you will need human agents to take over.
Ensure agents work in tandem with technology
The key to keeping the human touch in your contact centre is to ensure people and technology work in sync. To ensure this happens, you can:
- Provide your agents with thorough training on leveraging technology in a way that benefits them, the customers, and the business.
- You might deploy technology that automates simple inquiries that do not require a human agent (such as FAQs). Agents can then give more time to customers with complex concerns.
- Ensure that technology does not dominate your contact centre by providing equal access to automated options and customer service agents. You might enable customers to engage with an automated system at first, and if their problem needs specialised help, you can redirect them to the agent best suited to address their problem.
By striking the right balance between technology and the human touch, you can provide excellent customer service that meets the needs of your customers and supports the business.
Balance technology and the human touch with Premier Contact Point
Our cloud contact centre solution and customer experience solution delivers technology that enables your agents to add the human touch to their work. We deliver affordable, innovative features, such as visual IVR, CRM integration, overflow queues, self-service options, ivr call flow solutions and omnichannel queueing.
You can get in touch with us to book a demo of our cloud contact centre solution.
