Top Trends Shaping the Contact Center Customer Experience

In today’s connected world, customers have a multitude of channels for engagement and expect technology to permeate that experience.  The expectation is that any delivery of service will provide broad availability, fast and high-quality response and resolution, and data that is contextual and proactive.  At SpiceCSM we continue to see these customer requirements driving a transformation in customer experience and the need for:

More flexible Data Integration: connected systems allow for quicker responses and more breadth of high-quality information coming from external systems. Integrations with NICE CXone, for example, extend the media channels that SpiceCSM will support.

Intelligent Robotic Process Automation: every piece of data has the potential to become a new robotic process interaction, providing reliable and proactive execution for repeatable and time-consuming tasks.

Low-Code Platform: you can have the keys to the car, but if you don’t know how to drive it what good does it do? Organizations need to be as agile as the customers they support and a system that doesn’t require IT professionals to manage is worth its weight in gold.

There are many reasons why a contact center would benefit from integrating data between disparate systems.  To start, major capital investments in infrastructure make the thought of replacing core systems daunting for even the most ambitious projects.  When those core systems can connect to other specialized applications, their functionality can be extended with considerably less investment and without a “rip-and-replace” infrastructure overhaul.

In addition, savvy customers are realizing that software isn’t one-size-fits-all.  Specialized systems do a better job at their tasks than their consolidated systems can do at bundling those services together.  Finally, the biggest benefit of a consolidated system is the connectivity between the different pieces.  What if you could pick the best-in-breed software for each specialized task and they all worked together seamlessly like one product?  That’s the vision behind SpiceCSM: create a digital mesh that is tailor-made for your contact center.

Imagine the possibilities if you could:

Check a device’s firmware before troubleshooting and push an updated version if the device is out-of-date

Set dynamic proficiencies in NICE CXone based on performance algorithms using combined ACD and case metrics, ensuring the most proficient agents receive calls first

Combine ACD Data, CRM Data, and Billing data from separate systems into one support interaction

Most organizations have a seemingly endless amount of data; however, they are just starting to use this data to enrich the customer experience, versus simply utilizing it for rear-view mirror reporting.  At SpiceCSM, we believe that those data sets are a wealth of opportunity that requires very little capital investment to leverage effectively.  Each data point becomes a potential interaction with the added appeal of not requiring a human intervention.

Simply defined, these data-driven interactions are the underpinnings of Robotic Process Automation.  By interpreting data historically and in real-time, systems can trigger complex events including connections to other systems.  In many cases the interactions are machine-to-machine, so there is no additional overhead beyond configuration.  This makes Robotic Process Automation a clear priority and extremely powerful tool for any Call Center looking to maximize efficiency.

Organizations should be looking for openly accessible software where they can have the keys to the castle; free reign to build as they please.  While professional services are not likely to go away any time soon, any platform should be easy enough to manage without requiring a team of expensive engineers.  Solutions that can offer a development platform in a low-code environment are going to provide the most value and ROI for organizations by extending the manageability to “citizen-engineers”.

These are the members of the team that are closest to the processes, but typically do not have the technical expertise to write extensive machine code.  Empowering these traditionally non-technical roles provides more personal ownership and allows full-time engineers to share tasks that they could not have shared otherwise.  Contact Centers in particular will be more agile if they have a broader and more diverse subset of resources to help manage the platform and content.

Each of these initiatives will help an organization provide the highest level of service to today’s connected and on-demand customers.  Customer service continues to be the backbone of the Contact Center industry and providing a full white-glove service is quickly becoming the expectation rather than the gold standard.  At SpiceCSM, we see the new gold standard as making that service intelligent through connected systems that provide an all-inclusive customer-experience.  Automation augments high-quality support and happens reliably at any time of day, delivering consistent and proactive customer engagement with minimal effort.  Having all of this on a low-code platform means that everything can be managed easily by the business users that are closest to the content.

Every day the SpiceCSM team helps transform organizations by adding value to the processes and systems that their customers experience.  We help solve complex business problems and unleash new functionality between systems by becoming the intelligent hub for an extensible and all-encompassing digital mesh. Learn more by visiting our booth at ICUC 2017!