A Refreshing Year Ahead
This is the time of year that many of us start to wonder what the year ahead holds for the contact center industry.
This year, instead of wondering, pondering, guessing and speculating about what could happen in 2016, we decided to take a more scientific approach to our conjectures. This approach included conducting a research study among end-user members of the National Association of Call Centers (NACC).
Our reasoning was that if we could quantify the issues on the minds of customer service professionals going into 2016, we’d have a pretty good idea of which direction the contact center industry will take in the next year.
Our project involved 121 NACC members, the vast majority of whom are decision makers or decision influencers. The demographic breakdown of the participants by title is illustrated below:
Among the questions presented to the participating customer service professionals during this project was one that asked what their top priorities were for 2016. We presented a long list of potential priorities/issues as well as an “Other” option and asked respondents to choose all that applied to them. Only three respondents chose the “Other” option and specified priorities very specific to their business, so we felt confident that we captured 2016 priorities that are valid for the industry as a whole. The top five priorities named by our study respondents are shown below:
The response that we received from our study participants is refreshing for a number of reasons. First, four out of the five responses are more strategic than tactical in nature. There is no indication of a “next big thing” being on the collective mind of the customer service professional. Strategic shifts in customer service—supported by innovations in technology solutions in order to optimize the customer experience—top the list.
Also intriguing is the fact that a high percentage of participants recognize that the performance metrics that have been a foundation of the contact center industry for decades are being pushed aside for new performance metrics that further reflect the desire to optimize the customer experience. The performance metrics that are poised to gain traction among customer service professionals next year include first call resolution (FCR), customer effort score (CES), and net promoter score (NPS).
The issues illustrated in the figure above represent a broad brushstroke of the top issues for the contact center industry going into 2016, so we attempted to narrow the results and tighten the focus. To do that, we asked the study respondents to name the top priority for them going into 2016. Participants were asked to select one priority only. The results are portrayed in the figure below.
Leading the pack in the category of the single biggest priority for contact center executives going into 2016 is replacing or upgrading older technology solutions. Clearly this ties into other priorities, as the solutions required for the measurement of evolving performance metrics must be in place. And, the efficiency brought to bear by state-of-the-art solutions will also have a positive impact on job satisfaction for the agent while supporting the goal of optimizing the customer experience.
All indicators point to 2016 being the year of the technology refresh in the contact center.
Customer service executives have realized that it will be difficult if not impossible to provide a competitive, 2016-style customer experience if the technology supporting the effort is vintage 2000s or older. With relative economic stability and many companies finding themselves in strong cash positions, we expect to see a sharp uptick in the replacement of old technology for new solutions throughout 2016.
What a refreshing idea!
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