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1. How Service Agents have evolved in Virtual Contact Centers
There has been a great deal of research conducted on contact center trends, and it has shown that there
needs to be a focus on customer satisfaction and engaging with customers in multiple channels.
Therefore, contact centers today must be capable of handling voice, email, chat, and social media.
Companies that have superior customer service are likely implementing more than one communication
channel into their contact center. However, simply having multiple communication channels does not
automatically mean that they are excelling at customer service.
Most multi-channel contact centers incorporate a labor division between their agents. There will be
agents who are assigned to taking the calls and other agents who will handle any customer emails or live
chat sessions. An increase in communication channels does not mean that the customer’s experience
will automatically be improved though. There can be issues if the different channels are not integrated
seamlessly.
Digital communication can cause issues, and a very common problem occurs if there is an agent who is
taking any inbound calls and they are in a silo without access to what occurred when the customer was
interacting with the agent who was chatting with them. Often, the customer will become frustrated
since they will need to start over with their issue. In addition to customer frustration, the agent can
likely become frustrated as well and this can cause a very dissatisfied customer.
Fortunately, the technology that virtual contact centers have allows for companies to use a blended
agent strategy easily. Agents are able to handle multiple channels of communication from one screen
on their computer. Using a blended agent allows for them to have more access to information that will
help them to serve their customers more efficiently and quickly. Businesses can consolidate their voice,
chat, email and social media so the agent can prioritize channel response and increase customer
satisfaction.
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