5 Steps to Creating a Relevant ‘Generation C’ Contact Center
The challenge of meeting today’s growing Generation C, “C” for connectedness, consumer is no small undertaking. The demographic uses multiple forms of communication, is extremely interconnected, judges the buying experience based on how they feel they are being treated, and is setting the tone for how businesses will need to communicate to remain successful in the future. As a result, successful contact centers need to be both prepared and -pro-active, but more importantly, intelligent if they are to keep-up.
But contact centers are already trailing behind consumer expectations. In fact, by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. And while 62 percent of organizations recognize the experience provided through contact centers as a major component of the overall consumer experience, many are failing to keep up with today’s technologically savy consumer. The cost? 51 percent of US consumers have switched service providers within the past year due to poor customer service.
Step 1: Stay Relevant
According to recent research from ICMI, 74 percent of customers are using three or more channels for customer service related issues. While the phone still represents the preferred method of communication, alternative channels, such as email, text, chat, social media, and video, account for more than 30 percent of all customer engagements and are likely to continue to grow in popularity. Factor in the exponential expansion of mobile devices, the proliferation of the Internet of Things, and the social obsession with staying connected, and the importance of offering and maintaining a multichannel contact center platform becomes clearly obvious. The first step to an intelligent contact center? Stay tuned to the various technologies your customer base uses and remain relevant.
Step 2: Be Convenient
An astounding 67 percent of customers have stated a preference for self-service as opposed to speaking to a live representative. In fact, by 2020, the average customer will manage 85 percent of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. And with the majority of consumers equating great customer service to how quickly an issue is resolved, too great a focus on perfecting direct forms of communication can inadvertently fail to hit the mark. As a result, the ability to offer customers a platform from which they can quickly and seamlessly address their own inquiries will be crucial. The trick is to have a self-service platform capable of intelligently and conveniently responding to a client’s needs and demands.
Step 3: Keep-up
Despite the growing trend toward self-service, it is precisely when self-service tools lack the ability to deliver on customer expectations that the opportunity for differentiation exists. After all, customers increasingly want a relationship with many willing to pay more for a better experience. Unfortunately, the majority of customers are frustrated with current service levels with approximately 90 percent having to contact a company multiple times for the same issue, suffering long hold times, or having to repeat their issue numerous times. The main culprit? Access to relevant and real-time data. In fact, 60 percent of contact centers sill lack a unified view of the customer. The solution? Implement and maintain a contact center capable of seamlessly integrating and unifying the various data management applications (CRM, Ticketing, WFM, WFO, etc.) that run the organization to allow you to “keep-up” with customer expectations.
Step 4: Stay Smart
Perhaps the most obvious and necessary component of any intelligent contact center is the ability to derive actionable intelligence. But while two-thirds of organizations view access to real-time data as critical to any success, only eight percent currently have access to it. And as one considers that 90% of the world’s data has been created within the last two years and 50 billion devices are expected to go online by 2020, the task of managing all the various customer data points is a daunting one. Yet customers expect organizations to be prepared, informed and proactive which mandates any contact center have the capacity to collect, interpret, and anticipate the needs of each customer. As a result, a successful contact center is one with the data management and analytical ability to meet those needs and intelligently react to them.
Step 5: Remember Your Greatest Asset
Any discussion on how to create an intelligent contact center will naturally drift towards technology, but the fact remains the greatest asset of any contact center is its people. The right solutions do play a significant role in the success or failure of your customer experience initiatives, but the representatives manning the front lines play an equally important role. Case in point, 83 percent of consumers require some degree of customer support while making an online purchase but many agents lack the proper support to deliver. So while the proper features and tools are important, the ability to monitor, coach, guide, and train your representatives is a requirement if a company’s communication strategy is ever to succeed.
The contact center has become the new face of enterprise businesses as companies strive to deliver the customer experience consumers have come to expect. The question remains – are you doing what is necessary to keep-up? 
3CLogic is a leading provider of cloud-based contact center solutions. Offering next-generation multichannel communications, business intelligence, dynamic scripting, as well as seamless third-party integrations, we built our products to meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges.
To learn more visit: www.3clogic.com
SOURCES: Accenture: 2013 Global Consumer Pulse Survey, CFI Group, Cisco, Customers 2020 Report, Deloitte: Contact Center Survey, eConsultancy, Ovum Research, Ventana Research, Zendesk