Breaking communication siloes between contact center and non-contact center employees is paramount to improving customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and operating costs.
The average contact center agent spends 15% of their working day chasing down information needed to serve customers. These hours can add up to a financial loss of $1.5 million annually for a 200-agent contact center, according to Aberdeen. How much is your organization losing?
Who’s handling your company’s customer experience (CX)?
Customer inquiries today far exceed basic requests that can be completed faster and cheaper via self-service. People now reach out with complicated issues (and prefer not having to repeat themselves about them) that involve multiple parties and/or lines of business. Why should agents be the gatekeeper of complex customer journeys so many others have a stake in?
Business leaders need to understand and embrace a shared CX ownership model in which every employee is connected and fully vested.
Actions in three areas make all the difference, and they are within every contact center’s reach:
- Better connect departments for faster knowledge sharing
- Empower employees to be more productive and creative
- Quickly bring in experts to find crucial information
Avaya expects Workstream Collaboration (WSC) will be a key investment this year for achieving these collective CX objectives, as well as for achieving innovation without disruption.
Create a conversational workspace
Workstream Collaboration is a cloud-based application that converges siloed unified communications (UC) and contact center technology into one tool with one single application.
UC capabilities like presence, messaging, screen share, voice, and video conferencing are available directly within contact center architecture so agents can effortlessly and organically communicate with anyone across the organization – whoever they are, wherever they happen to be – and vice versa, with full security and compliance. Integrated with agent desktop applications, there’s no stopping your contact center workers.
Two scenarios demonstrating this include a parent who doesn’t know their child’s healthcare costs aren’t being covered or a customer who doesn’t understand why he or she has an outstanding balance on his healthcare account.
You could see who’s available to help using presence (functionality) and then chat about things such as policy changes and customer qualifications in real-time. You could find the person who has the answers to get the information you need, pull them into the customer conversation with you, or have them help you creatively problem solve.
All of this happens while the customer is on the call, meaning no need for multiple transfers or even hold time depending on how quickly information can be obtained.
Just as importantly, you can innovate your customer experience while retaining your core service. Workstream Collaboration is a fantastic step toward innovation at a pace and path that fits your business needs.
You’ll improve information-sharing – helping agents get a complete view of situations to make informed decisions quickly – without abandoning current investments.
By the end of this year, it’s expected that 75% of organizations will be using Workstream Collaboration company-wide to improve CX, productivity, and company culture.
CX is everyone’s business
Customers don’t see communication siloes. When they have a bad experience, they blame the brand. This often falls on the contact center agent who is generally considered the voice of the company. This needs to change. Every employee impacts CX in a certain way, not just the agent who says that first “hello.”
This year, we will see a significant focus on enabling contact center agents to quickly get in touch with employees from different departments while handling customer requests. The ability to consult subject matter experts or even pull them into interactions with customers will become table stakes when it comes to delivering a great experience.
Start connecting different departments for faster knowledge sharing, empowering your employees to be more productive and creative, and making it easier to engage experts.
Learn more about Avaya’s award-winning Workstream Collaboration solutions.
