Transforming customer experiences

The past few months have presented huge challenges for businesses and employees around the world, including the disruption for many to a work-from-home environment. While the majority of contact centers are well past the initial hurdle of providing agents access to work from, it was no easy feat as many didn’t have an agile infrastructure that supported a seamless transition.

What is new is the impact that rapid digital technology advances have had on younger age groups. "Digital native" Millennials and Generation Z have grown up in an ever-connected world of online shopping, social media, and all the world's information at their fingertips. Some don't know any other way.

Most state a federal government agencies are struggling with exponential increases in call volumes as a result of the pandemic. One unnamed agency experienced an over 3000% jump in call volume. The scariest part of that data point is that agency had not yet begun executing contact tracing efforts.

It's important to be purposeful when cutting costs. Using benchmarks can help. Use internal benchmarks to make cuts relative to past performance. Use industry benchmarks to make cuts that will put you in line with other contact centers like yours. Using both sets of benchmarks in combination may yield the best results.

Disaster planning and recovery, business continuity, working remotely and now, working from home. As these terms increasingly dominate the vernacular around business operations and preparedness, a diverse community of companies and organizations are finding that NICE inContact's CXone cloud contact center platform enables them to meet disaster-related challenges in ways they never thought possible.

If predictions are true, call centers are about to get busy. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, and we have already had 3 named storms this year. Call centers must be prepared with a business continuity plan that accounts for any type of disaster.

Over the last few months, organizations across the world have relocated their contact center agents from cubicals to comfy couches (or hopefully kitchen tables and desks.) Regardless of the furniture, the point is, most contact centers have adopted a work-from-home model in a very short amount of time. Every day we see leaders of countries and companies alike trying to balance their message to stakeholders– these are extraordinary times, but at the same time, we must also do what we can to maintain normalcy and business as usual.