Reframing contact center strategies in light of ‘the new normal’

Jay Gupta, senior product marketing manager at Talkdesk, shared the advice of the enterprise cloud contact center provider on how contact center strategies should be reframed in light of Covid-19.

The future of the contact center post-Covid-19

With Covid-19 forcing drastic restrictions on contact centers across the globe, many organizations have been forced to shift operations in record time to protect the health of employees and customers, while adapting to remote-working guidelines.

Gupta offered attendees valuable insights gleaned from a survey of 1,800 customers on the key customer trends that are developing as a result of the current crisis. She noted that while the data has showed that most customers prefer call support, particularly for urgent issues, many organizations remained ill-prepared to cope with an increase in call volume.

Gupta went on to share further findings from this survey, including an observed increase in demand for online orders and services, as well as an increase in new customers for digital subscription services. In light of these shifting trends, Gupta said she believed that a structured plan was necessary to achieve optimal contact center operations post-Covid-19 and shared Talkdesk’s five-stage process for achieving this:

1. Resolve

In the midst of a crisis it is vital to address the immediate challenges across the organization to ensure employee and customer safety, through measures such as providing protective equipment or remote access. It is critical to rapidly enable the infrastructure, management processes and virtual systems to support remote working for agents and many organizations have been leveraging cloud-based solutions to do just that.

2. Resilience

It is necessary to ensure that an organization’s responses to a crisis are flexible and can be sustained. Leveraging data and analytics through business intelligent solutions that provide a ‘sense and respond’ panel for CX leaders allows for more responsive and relevant ways to address customer needs.

3. Return

As a sense of normality returns, organizations should work with internal departments to generate a plan for when the restrictive measures end. Having workforce management solutions in place can help with flexibility and change, so that agents are always well positioned to manage their work despite any uncertainty.

4. Reimagine

Organizations must plan for how the contact center will function in a world where Covid-19 is no longer a global concern, by researching government guidelines, the state of economy, technology changes and industry trends. For example, virtual agents may be seen as a ‘nice to have’ at the moment, but could be essential post-Covid-19 due to their ability to automatically scale with large call volumes.

5. Reform

Taking action as soon as possible can help organizations anticipate the future and welcome the next generation of CX products and services. Covid-19 has caused many digital transformation projects to move off course and forced organizations to operate outside of set plans to keep contact centers going. At some point, however, clarity and structure will be required to manage large-scale, disruptive changes as they occur. Gupta advocated the use of high-quality, adaptable technology and infrastructure to enable this.

For a closer look into Talkdesk’s five-stage plan for ensuring your contact center can excel in a post Covid-19 world and to share in the insights of its customer research, watch Gupta’s session at CXN Live: Contact Centers above.