Customers want to be heard in times of uncertainty, but massive call spikes and closed offices are some of the challenges are getting in the way of the human connection that’s desperately needed right now.
TTEC’s recent COVID-19 webinar, Intelligent Automation for the Contact Centre, introduced three automation-driven solutions to help optimise and personalise customer interactions while accelerating support agent productivity during and after the pandemic. It is possible to bring genuine CX empathy and authenticity at scale to the crisis and beyond. Here are some highlights:
1. Supervise for coaching and workflow opportunities
The unprecedented migration of people and technology out of physical call centres has made it difficult to provide the day-to-day mentorship and monitoring of a brick-and-mortar space. Technological restraints, new workplaces and unfamiliar systems are challenging both experienced and new agents.
That’s why deploying workforce intelligence is essential for providing eyes on your work-from-home agents, while also equipping managers and supervisors with the information needed to support and manage agent welfare and productivity.
Utilising supervision software allows leaders to better understand their agents’ efforts by analysing and visualising applications with data. Being able to better understand how an agent operates their system, such as how they navigate applications, helps leaders identify opportunities to insert automation that makes agents’ jobs easier.
It’s essential that organisations deploy this solution as quickly as possible to pull in data and act promptly.
2. Identify and act on customer sentiment
Customer expectations are as high as ever when it comes to response time, and to avoid long wait times or inconvenience on voice calls many are flocking to email. Unfortunately, exploding volume coupled with hiring freezes are leading to even longer queues in this channel. In this case, automation can be used to manage email workflow for faster and sometimes better responses.
Email automation, in addition to handling email volume, uses natural language processing to identify customer sentiment, feelings of anger, confusion or joy, to triage incoming emails and route directly to an agent if escalation is needed. An email that the bot reads in a panicked tone will move immediately to an agent compared to one with neutral or positive tones.
Plus, the tool is always learning so it can continue to identify different sentiments and connect them to common problems so agents can deliver empathy from the start of the conversation. In the end, it’s about letting customers know that they are not just another ticket in the queue.
3. Intelligently route challenges
The call centre environment was built around creating a controlled environment where nearly everything was organised and optimised. Now in today’s changing climate, locations are empty and people are doing their best from home while dealing with technology, family and sometimes health limitations. Agent efficiency and productivity may suffer. Not everyone will be able to work at the same efficiency from home and innovation is needed.
Intelligent routing, for example, eliminates unnecessary work to create opportunities for agents to collaborate better and reduce their workload. Adding bots to execute end-to-end repetitive processes frees up human associates to focus on voice channels, which contain generally more emotional or complex interactions. Meanwhile, while the bots are routing interactions based on urgency, tie back in the digital channels to communicate back and forth with multiple customers at once.
Intelligent automation and routing free up front-line agents while providing answers as quickly as possible on the channels customers want to use.
Automate intelligently and authentically
In this new environment it’s essential to use the right tools to not only deliver value to your customers, but to your associates as well. Everyone is tackling the same problems day-to-day, so it’s important to deploy and deliver value now and continue to optimise for tomorrow. Intelligent automation can give you the right tools to make stressful moments a little easier.
Watch the on-demand TTEC webinar, COVID-19 NOW: Intelligent Automation for the Contact Centre, to gain more insight on how to accelerate agent productivity without losing the authenticity needed now more than ever.
