Transforming customer experiences

The ability to use AI in your contact center business is growing exponentially. You might be asking yourself, "where do we start?". Learn the secrets of Fortune 200 companies who are using an AI-powered IVR to achieve their KPIs and gain a competitive advantage.

There’s always at least one in every contact center. The agent that tests your patience, triggers an eye-twitch, elicits some curse words (in your head, of course) and makes your job as a contact center manager much more challenging at times. But the reality is, these agents aren’t waking up in the morning with the goal of making your life more difficult! Nor did they accept the job with the goal of failing – which means there is still hope for them!

In the first post of this three part series, Effective Customer Service Can be the Key to Small Business Growth, we talked about how small businesses need to protect their existing customer base if they want to achieve meaningful, sustainable growth. Providing effective customer service, in which issues are solved competently during the first contact, is a good step in this direction.

If CX is the king, then an interactive voice response (IVR) system is the butler that greets the castle visitors. A well-designed IVR, just like a competent butler, cordially greets guests, assesses the reason for their visit, and makes sure they reach their destination. This interaction sets the tone for the rest of the "visit."

Businesses today are in the unique position of balancing widespread disruption with consistently growing customer expectations. For customers, a tumultuous cultural environment, a public health crisis and economic uncertainty are not valid reasons for businesses to drop the ball on experience. Rather, quite the opposite. Now is the most important time to deliver on a brand promise of exceptional experiences – or risk damaging these critical relationships. In fact, our NICE inContact CX Transformation Benchmark study has shown that 81 percent of customers say they will switch to a competitor after a single poor experience.

The coronavirus pandemic has undoubtedly put a strain on the workforce, and many organizations are reviewing their current strategies to ensure business continuity as the crisis continues. To successfully navigate the pandemic and achieve positive business outcomes, companies need to take strategic and meaningful steps towards building a more flexible working environment that enables agile and remote working practices.

2020 has transformed the way life looks both inside and outside the workplace, with a lasting impact that’s still affecting contact centers around the world. What does the global COVID-19 pandemic mean for contact centers? How are customers and agents evolving?