Contact centre roles are adapting to market needs so says Hervé Leroux, Chief Marketing Officer at contact centre specialists Odigo
With the growth of this market and an ever-expanding workforce, the role of contact centre employees also needs to evolve. Beyond the often-portrayed contact centre stereotypes lies a spectrum of highly skilled duties in an increasingly professional field.
Contact centre stereotypes – Consumer perceptions of contact centres
The ECCCSE study carried out in collaboration with Odigo provides a valuable perspective on consumer perceptions of contact centres. According to the study Europeans as a whole, have a rather mixed perception of customer service.
Although contact centre customer satisfaction appears to have fallen, the perception of interactions with agents is notably more positive than for service in general. This underscores endemic problems in the contact centre industry but also the value customers place on the skill and support offered by agent-led service.
Interestingly it is worth noting that the perception of customer service in general is more positive among young people (aged between 20 and 30). This may be explained by their greater ease in using digital channels and self-service tools.
The role of contact centre agents: Then and now
Before 2018 call centres, and later contact centres, employed a large majority of young people looking for a job to pay the bills, or to fit around their studies. Being an agent was not seen as a profession and didn’t seem to offer any real long-term career opportunities.
After 2018 perception changed. Now a position as an agent can open the door to internal promotional or other roles within the contact centre industry, and requires a diverse skill set to excel:
√ Organizational skills
√ Verbal and written communication skills
√ Soft skills
√ Marketing knowledge
There are even schools specializing in contact centre training like the Call Center School or Imparta, for example.
The Workplace Learning report signed by LinkedIn in 2022 states that a large majority of employees aspire to good continuous training within the company. 94% of workers surveyed said they would stay with their company longer if it invested in training.
New contact centre roles minimize gaps and distribute duties
Organisation and typical contact centre structure
Contact centres are built from the ground up around agents who receive calls, answer emails, chat on social networks and even video chat with customers.
Beyond these front-line interactions lies a whole operational ecosystem:
√ Supervision
√ Quality monitoring and performance management
√ Workforce management and resource planning
√ Operational management and optimisation
√ Training/coaching and HR
New skills to meet new needs
With increasing professionalism, higher training standards and advanced technology, contact centres have seen an opportunity to restructure the roles within their ecosystems to incorporate new duties and meet new challenges:
Technical and technological skills: with the arrival of digital channels and AI, contact centres are looking for people who are adept at new technologies and who understand how artificial intelligence-based tools work.
Communication skills: the customer service market can be demanding and stressful. Agents with soft skills and strong interpersonal skills are more likely to meet customer expectations by expressing empathy in their interactions.
Marketing skills: companies are increasingly interested in profiles capable of taking on the role of brand ambassador. Agents must be able to deliver a coherent message that reflects the company’s image.
Expanding the scope of contact centre duties and opportunities
As well as improving the quality of customer service, this new range of skills has paved the way for the creation of new roles that meet the current needs of contact centres:
Quality manager: he or she is responsible for combining the data gathered from recordings of both voice and video conversations to identify process gaps. In this role features like screen recording are useful to analyze advisers’ skills.
Data Analyst: contact centres collect a huge amount of data. Data Analysts analyze this data to draw conclusions and solutions to support processes and propose strategies to acquire new customers or retain existing customers.
Training managers: to incorporate new contact centre duties and optimize the performance of agents filling these new roles, organizations need to create proactive training content. With the help of quality managers, training managers design teaching tools targeted at the company’s shortcomings.
Opening career opportunities enriches teams and encourages talent retention which is good news for organizations! Not only is it costly to recruit and train new agents, but the erosion of knowledge and experience in contact centres with high turnover will impact customer experience quality.
Roles are evolving with the arrival of contact centre AI
Customer experience tech is changing contact centre roles and now new AI-driven features like agent support tools are changing the entire approach to providing quality service. Traditional scripting is being replaced by dynamic AI analysis of interactions in real time to provide ‘next best action’ suggestions for agents.
Natural language understanding makes it easier not only to qualify and route customers accurately but also to detect contextual information.
Let’s take an example:
A customer calls her home insurance company to report water damage in her garage.
The agent starts the claims process workflow.
The word “garage” is detected in real-time by speech analytics.
An AI-generated next-step suggestion prompts the agent to ask the customer about car insurance and offer a quote.
AI can act as an intelligent coach, helping agents develop and take on new duties by providing in-call reminders, suggestions, and tips. This expands the ecosystem of support for agents: team leaders, managers, AI, and a spectrum of supervisor tools like workforce management and quality monitoring. In this sense, agents really do become augmented agents.
Artificial intelligence supports this entire ecosystem, helping to keep a finger on the pulse of new customer expectations, tracking trends and increasing reactivity.
Enhance the skills of your teams with a customised CCaaS solution
Odigo™ is an innovative CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) solution developed to bring a spectrum of AI features to your contact centre. Designed by industry professionals who understand the new challenges and roles in customer relations, this solution offers functionality for agents and managers alike, incorporating scalable tools that will adapt to future changes.
Odigo’s teams of experts can also guide you through the configuration of the solution and assess your technical requirements. Our professionals will also identify your strengths and areas for improvement and highlight potential new roles within your contact centre.
Hervé Leroux is Chief Marketing Officer at Odigo
Odigo is a leading provider of Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions that facilitate communication between large organizations and individuals using a global omnichannel management platform. With its innovative approach based on empathy and technology, Odigo enables brands to connect through the crucial human element of interaction, while also taking full advantage of the potential of digital. A pioneer in the customer experience (CX) market, the company caters to the needs of more than 250 large enterprise clients in over 100 countries.
