In this day and age, direct human-to-human interaction between an organization and its customers is a rarity, which makes it important to deliver an outstanding experience when it does occur. As the critical customer service hub, the contact center must provide the best experience possible, or risk losing customers.
What's more, non-human interactions via IVR, Web chat bots and self-service tools further enhance the experience by giving customers the convenience of engaging with organizations on the platforms and at the times of their choosing. As a result, the contact center isn't just the critical hub of customer engagement -- it's the most complex technology and communication hub in an organization. As time goes on, it will only continue to get richer and more complex.
Why a Holistic Solution Matters
If an issue crops up in a contact center, how will the organization become aware of it? Who will know if a customer ends up in a dead end on an IVR? What if the self-service website is redirecting in an endless loop? As the complexity of technology increases, so does the potential impact to customer service should something break.
Many organizations face an inability to effectively monitor and manage the multitude of solutions specific to the components of a contact center environment. What's really needed is a solution that looks at all of the contact center technologies holistically. An effective customer engagement might begin with a Web chat, then move to an audio or video interaction. All of those technologies need to work seamlessly, and that's where a 360-degree view of contact center performance management comes in.
Effective performance management isn't just about identifying where a problem exists. It's also about identifying potential issues before they arise. To get to levels 3, 4, and 5 of operational maturity, you need to be looking at optimizing the contact center environment. You need to pay attention to operational efficiency, cost efficiency, and customer experience optimization.
Simplicity of a Single Solution
With the added layers of technology, organizations often have the challenge of employing people to try and manage all the systems effectively. Unfortunately, this task is getting so complex it doesn't matter how many people are brought on to tackle the issue. The human factor will always be reactive, slower and more expensive than automated management processes. We have reached the limits of human capacity to manage these levels of complexity effectively without holistic and intelligent performance, and experience, management solutions.
All of the websites, IVRs, switches/routers, on-screen popups, agent experience, and customer experience need to come together in a single dashboard, providing a bird's eye view of the entire environment. This allows IT and network teams to become more efficient, seeing problems before they arise or getting to the root cause of an issue sooner. Many organizations are grappling with the challenge of delivering outstanding customer experience across a multichannel environment. If yours is one of them, perhaps it is time to look at solutions that can simplify the management.
This post originally appeared on NoJitter
