Omni-Channel Customer Engagement Article

Low-hanging fruit – who doesn’t want to go for it when it comes to business results? The opportunities are there for the taking and by moving on the obvious, you’re able to hit goals and turn in some impressive numbers. Upper management is happy and you can breathe easy, at least for a while.

The problem with this approach is that the low-hanging fruit doesn’t readily replenish itself and once it’s gone, it’s gone. In the contact center world, that can spell disaster, paving the road for dried up opportunities and quick obsolescence. To reverse that trend, it’s time to focus on omni-channel customer engagement and opportunities that offer long-term success.

This was the primary focus of a recent Aspect (News - Alert) blog. The company delivers solutions designed to support the omni-channel customer engagement experience, and stresses that the right path to sustainable opportunities means providing agents with solutions that optimize efficiency. That not only helps them to create better experiences for customers, it also leads to greater job satisfaction.

Aspect recently partnered with Pelorus to conduct a survey of contact center leaders. In the process, they learned that only one in six contact center managers believe that contact center agents are actually satisfied with their jobs. What’s promising, however, is that 87 percent of those participating in the survey believed there was opportunity to improve agent productivity with the implementation of software with a better user interface. Another 74 percent believed that such a move would improve agent morale.

As a general rule, agents want to be able to perform their jobs well. They feel the pressures of the performance metrics and the demands of the customers with which they interact. They likely see the gaps that exist in their own environments that limit their ability to be successful and deliver on customer expectations. If management understands these shortfalls and is willing to invest in solutions that move the entire organization in a better direction, everyone wins.

Ultimately, agents are tasked with producing satisfied customers. The challenge is that agents aren’t always in control of the experience created for the customer. If management recognizes the importance of omni-channel customer engagement and makes the necessary investments to support these interactions, agents are more empowered to deliver on customer expectations. That leads to a much more satisfying job and turnover is likely to continue to decrease.

The end goal should be the creation of an environment where agents have the tools they need to deliver on the expectations of the customer, while also meeting organizational goals. That happens when the low-hanging fruit is just a perk and the true focus is on creating the optimal experience in every interaction. That approach leads to long-term success.