Which leads me to my final prediction – a shift in the use of Customer Experience technology by both consumers and businesses alike. In the early days of the 2020 lockdown, consumers were extremely tolerant of organisations’ poor service levels and long wait times because contact centres were – just like everyone else – having to make huge adjustments to their operating model. Well, that was nine months ago, and consumers are somewhat justified in expecting better now.
There are two significant ways CX directors and contact centre managers can continue to support their customers. The first is good support for home-based contact centre agents with all the security, availability, and voice quality taken care of through services like Secure Homeworker. The second is to take advantage of an existing move – largely consumer-driven – towards an increasingly “digital-first” engagement model, where customers will predominantly “self-serve” via website or mobile app. If that self-service fails, there’s then a tier of digital help and support.
This may take the form of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) but the use of chat powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automatically identify the customer’s intent are increasingly being used to improve the customer experience and provide support.
Then, if the situation still can’t be resolved, the transaction is brought to a live agent continuing with either text-chat or a live call to bring the interaction to a successful conclusion.
So those are my key predictions for 2021. Though, I do have one extra one, and it is that this year will continue to provide us with personal and professional challenges, which will continue to accelerate the pace of innovation and the importance of communications technology in both our professional and personal lives.
With that – I wish you all the best for a very happy, and a safe, 2021.