What is often forgotten in improving the customer’s experience is that the customer would have preferred not to have had to do anything in the first place.
The reason for the need for contact is not in the contact centre. It is in the design of policies and procedures, in the speed or error rate of processing, in the expectations set or confusion caused by communications. Furthermore, the need for the contact to be by telephone or face to face is caused by an inability of customers to help themselves through online or other self service channels. So the customer’s experience of the contact and the contact centre cannot, in reality, be seen in isolation.
Accordingly, the role of the contact centre is changing. It is no longer just to handle contact. It is also to identify:
- Why telephone contact happened at all and how much occurred for what reasons.
- Why customers could not self serve themselves.
- How non contact and contact processes could be improved.
- What customers perceive, their insights and feedback.
Original telephony metrics for customer experience or customer quality need therefore to be changed to recognise these context changes and what it takes to operate contact centres professionally today.
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