Putting Customers on Hold can Damage your Business

How putting customers on hold can damage your business

According to Dave Adamson, CTO at Espria, the modern contact centre is the driving force behind customer experience

There is an irony that in 2023, we confidently and enthusiastically talk about metaverse brand experiences and community engagement, yet customers still struggle to get basic customer experience and cannot get hold of someone on the phone.

A term that’s less familiar than Web3 today is CCaaS: contact centre as a service. Despite its anonymity, it quietly underpins the reputation of any customer-facing organisation.

Whilst telecoms communications touch points were levelled down during the pandemic, customers were temporarily tolerant of lowered service levels. It is now an expectation that businesses have moved beyond this and are more digitally transformed. People’s expectations of speed of access and personalisation have been raised thanks to how we interact with technology. Customers expect choice, speed, and personalisation.

Multiple contact forms are not enough.

Customers expect integrated opti-channel touch points from organisations seeking a smooth experience across all channels. Whilst omnichannel seeks to provide a seamless experience across multiple channels, opti-channel looks to streamline the experience further by selecting the right channel for the customer’s enquiry. Opti-channel enables better queuing and call handling overall, with less time waiting and customers a more personalised and tailored experience. By having an uninterrupted journey across all channels, customers are more content and likely to remain to do business with that organisation.

Contact centres that talk to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems drive sales

Integrated contact centres can bolster sales by integrating with CRM in multiple ways. Agents are able to provide more personalised support by accessing customer data, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, through customer data analysis, it is possible to identify potential upsell or cross-sell opportunities for products and services. Integrating with a CRM allows contact centres to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour that can inform marketing and sales strategies. Finally, streamlining the sales process through CRM integration simplifies the overall customer experience, leading to an increased sales rate.

Intelligent contact centres gives businesses a smarter approach to customer experience

Data from intelligent contact centres provide valuable insights into the customer experience and help businesses scale their communications for changing customer needs. By analysing customer interactions, organisations can identify patterns and behaviour trends, preferences, and pain points. This information can inform product development, marketing strategies, and customer support processes. By effectively identifying and responding to customers’ changing needs, monitoring feedback and sentiment, the customer experience can be enhanced to generate greater satisfaction and loyalty.

Through the use of AI in contact centres it is possible to increase productivity, save costs, and upgrade the customer experience. For instance, AI-driven chatbots can manage typical customer queries, permitting human agents to concentrate on more complex tasks. AI will also assess customer data and provide insights into consumer behaviour, allowing contact centres to identify opportunities to upsell or cross-sell products and services. However, it is essential to guarantee that AI is used ethically and clearly and that customers are conscious when communicating with a robot instead of a human agent.

Optichannel customer touch points offer an opportunity to get a step ahead of the customer. Imagine, instead of being on hold for 40 minutes then being fed through different teams, the customer’s number automatically pulls up all of their info for the call responder, or chatbot, social media team or IT support. Every time data is not captured and synchronised across all channels, the customer journey can become unnecessarily long and more frictions are created.

Too many organisations get side-tracked by complex CX marketing and overlook the essential first point of contact. You might have a fantastic marketing campaign online, and impressive PR coverage but your customers are your biggest advocates. Happy customers will always be your best PR – but a bad phone call can make all the difference.

Dave Adamson is CTO at Espria

At Espria, we make your business processes simple, and for over 25 years, we have been providing bespoke managed IT business solutions to our clients throughout the UK.

With a focus on delivering outstanding service, we constantly evolve to our customers future-proofed solutions to empower their businesses with technology to support and enable digital transformation.