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CXMARKET GUIDE 2020
Essential Insights for Tech Professionals
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CX MARKET GUIDE 2020 | ESSENTIAL INSIGHTS FOR TECH PROFESSIONALS uctoday.com
PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD
For the last couple of years, the UC market has been evolving at a phenomenal speed.
That’s something that has remained true as we step into the new decade and 2020.
Everywhere we look, “as a service,” concepts are gaining steam. Easily accessible new technology is opening the door to incredible opportunities in everything from customer experience to user productivity.
A new communication stack for a new decade.
Ambient communications represent the data-driven approach to crucial business conversations. We’re living in a world where customers, teams, and users alike all expect more from the businesses that they’re interacting with.
As we head deeper into this new decade, work communication will evolve and accelerate, splitting into various crucial avenues, from
intelligent voice to video, instant-messaging and more. Companies that are unable to embrace the latest strategies for interactivity won’t be able to thrive in the new world. Now is the time to evolve, or risk falling behind.
Fortunately, many organisations have already received this message loud and clear. Demand for cloud-delivered communication and collaboration services are on the rise. The threats and changes of COVID-19 will turn the cloud-invested minority into the majority in very little time. Businesses around the globe have been forced to test the benefits of the cloud for themselves, and they see first-hand just how valuable this environment can be.
There’s no turning back. Everywhere we look, employees and business leaders are adapting to this new digital world. It will be difficult to close the door on such a successful new route to productivity. Aside from the rising demand for cloud and “aaS” technologies, we’re also seeing an increase in collaboration between major players in the industry. Massive partnerships, such as the ones between Avaya and RingCentral, have changed the scope of what’s possible in the communications space.
Additionally, leaders like Microsoft and Cisco are leaving their rivalries behind and working more closely together to serve the needs of various customers. Slack and Cisco can now both provide their own form of interoperability with Microsoft Teams.
Elsewhere, M&A strategies continue, with brands like 8x8 acquiring their own CPaaS business. What’s more, leaders like Slack and Zoom have shown us what’s possible when a forward-thinking collaboration and communication company enters the public market. Europe is rapidly becoming the new hot space for market roll-ups and consolidation.
The workplace will never be the same.
The arrival of new collaborations between business leaders, sensational disruptive products, and updated technology combined with the growing remote and globalised workforce has changed the business landscape for good.
Video-first communications and collaboration options are rapidly emerging as the only option for successful interaction in this new landscape.
At the same time, CCaaS with remote agile workers, AI-powered analytics, and omnichannel opportunities, is delivering the kind of amazing experiences that customers have been demanding for years.
In this new environment, businesses need to be ready and willing to adapt. This means being open to new opportunities, wherever they emerge. For instance, connecting everyone – including frontline workers will be a critical concern for many leading companies. 5G and better mobility will help to keep us all aligned wherever we are.
5G will also help to enhance more game-changing technology in the form of voice-powered smart assistants that respond to our every need, and VR/AR tech that brings new realities into customer conversations.
Get Ready for Ambient Communications
Rob Scott | [email protected] Today
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Thank you to all our sponsors, advertisers and guest speakers.
Looking to the future.
We had a fantastic response at UC Today to our debut virtual expo and conference. UC Summit 2021 will be returning in January 2021.
However, if you can’t wait until then for more updates from myself and the team, then you’re in luck. In the countdown to the new year, we’ll be hosting exclusive events on our new virtual venue, designed to keep you informed in a more immersive way.
I hope you enjoy this year’s Market Guide. Remember to watch this space for more updates and insights from the world of UC, Collaboration and CX technology.
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CX
How are you serving your customers?
Customer experience, or CX, is the most valuable trend for many businesses to consider today. Almost every company has recognised that the only way to differentiate in the current landscape is to provide an experience that’s truly unforgettable for your target customer.
Since the contact centre is at the heart of the conversation between clients and their favourite brands, it’s no wonder that the CC landscape is evolving at an incredible pace, particularly with the support of things like CCaaS to deliver rapid changes over the cloud.
Heading into the next decade, there’s no doubt that we’ll continue to see a revolution in the way that people and brands communicate.
The transformative technology in the contact centre.
Innovative technology in the contact centre is one of the main things changing the way that people communicate today.
We’ve seen a significant rise in the number of businesses embracing artificial intelligence in their customer experience strategies. For some companies, this means implementing chatbots and virtual assistants into the customer routing and service strategy.
CX and the Evolving Contact Centre
For other organisations, the potential of AI comes from its ability to deliver virtual assistant support to agents that need help providing a more customised and relevant experience for customers.
Businesses are discovering that AI solutions combined with CRM and contact centre integrations can help agents to unlock the information they need to deliver more seamless and memorable experiences to clients.
On top of that, business leaders have the option to automatically track trends and performance in the contact centre with things like workforce optimisation strategies. These WFO tools can highlight the agents that need the most training and support, reducing the risk of bottlenecks in business.
Modes of contact continue to grow.
It’s not just the arrival of new technology in the contact centre that’s making a huge difference to the way that we connect and communicate either. Beyond AI, we’re also seeing a growing trend for omnichannel technology in the CX landscape. The new and improved strategies
available for omnichannel communication don’t just include voice and email. They spread into multiple potential options for customers, including apps and tools that they already like using, like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
As omnichannel solutions become more common, businesses also need to implement management and security tools that can help them to ensure that they’re delivering a consistent quality of service and a secure experience at every customer touchpoint too. Integrating omnichannel tools with things like artificial intelligence for automated tracking and routing can be an excellent way to streamline the experience for customers and agents alike.
As we head into the future, there’s no doubt that we’ll continue to see updates to the way that clients and brands interact. Messaging is already becoming a more popular option for the global marketplace, along with chatbots that allow for self-service, providing team members with an easy way to reduce their workload, while still delivering the right quality of support.
No business today can afford to ignore the ever-changing evolution of the contact centre.
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The world is digital, we connect with each other across a digital fabric, every day.
Now more than ever, the importance of being able to connect across multiple channels isn’t a question of if - it’s happening at an enormous scale.
We share our personal lives digitally on social media platforms, and as consumers we have come to expect that businesses offer us digital channels to make our outreach convenient.
Leading companies are finding new and meaningful ways to connect with their customers leveraging those channels. The digital omni-channel provides a unique opportunity for businesses to increase the value of the engagements they have with customers, increase the number of ways consumers engage with
the brand and ultimately build customer loyalty. In a Customer Experience driven economy, if businesses can’t connect with customers on their preferred digital channels, that business will struggle to retain them because they’ll navigate to a company that does employ those channels. The bigger picture here is that whatever worked for a successful company over the last 10 years in building customer loyalty, will not work in the next 10 years.
In its latest Customer Experience Benchmarking Study, Dimension Data notes that a full omnichannel strategy is a reality for just 7.2% of businesses, yet that 62.4% of those polled see opportunity in evolving their CX to stand out from competitors. In fact, Dimension Data also notes that 84% of companies that strive to improve their customer experience report an increase in their revenue.
So where do you start?
Contact Centres stand as the front line for all customer facing organisations. They field questions, concerns, change requests, frustration, purchases, returns and a long list of other needs that customers of that business have every day. For that reason, contact centres present the most immediate opportunity to start driving change across the organisation - but also driving it where its most important, with the customer.
For decades, the stereotype of engaging a contact centre has not been a positive one, but new cloud contact centre solutions have turned that stereotype on its head. Contact centres now represent a significant opportunity for businesses looking to drive significant improvements in
their customer experience game. Cloud contact centres allow businesses to add features, like Workforce Optimisation, allowing leaders to have clear visibility into their contact centre’s ability to achieve critical KPI’s while also allowing seamless engagements across digital channels.
A conversation that starts with a tweet, might very well end up in an email, on a phone call or in a web chat.
The ‘digital-first’ contact centre allows consumers that hop from channel to channel, to do so seamlessly, without having to explain the context of their inquiry over and over. This alone is a game changer in delivering on customer experience.
Traditional voice will always play an incredibly important role in the contact centre but embracing digital channels is an absolute must in an experience driven economy.
The digital revolution is in full swing.
NICE inContact makes it easy and affordable for organisations around the globe to create stand out customer experiences while meeting key business metrics.
Koby AmedumeInternational Marketing DirectorNICE inContact
uk.niceincontact.com
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Embracing the cloud standard.
Odigo’s contact centre as a service solution elevates customer service to new heights.
Understanding and mastering contemporary customer service trends may have been sufficient in the past, but these skills are not enough in today’s competitive market.
Successful organisations must anticipate future requirements to surpass evolving expectations, which is why companies are turning to Odigo, a proven leader in developing cutting-edge Contact Centre as a Service solutions tailor-made to meet needs, delight employees, and manage full customer life cycles.
Implementing Odigo’s agile cloud-based solutions means providing your contact centre with an intuitive, state-of-the-art tool which enables
seamless interactions with your customers, provides insightful data, and facilitates swift responses and high resolution rates. Support from AI-driven conversational agents (bots) further creates a rewarding experience which translates into dedicated, efficient and personalised customer care.
For customers, a channel-less approach delivers unprecedented convenience, as conversations can take place between people and businesses on any device, through any channel, and anytime.
Delivering increased accessibility backed by world-class security, enhanced communication through trusted reliability, and user-friendly practicality through the latest technology, Odigo guarantees memorable customer experiences.
Odigo is proud to contribute to developing brand loyalty and helping companies form stronger bonds with existing customers while attracting new ones.
Partnering with Odigo involves more than upgrading digital infrastructure and boosting remote work capabilities.
The flexibility of the cloud-based offers gives organisations the opportunity to work with Odigo experts in designing a customised vision that suits their specific needs.
Odigo’s experienced specialists excel at training staff on the features and functionalities of transformative software and equipment, ensuring employees are proficient at using Odigo tools to achieve their best performances.
Ongoing advice and support are integral components of the Odigo offer, with Odigo Experience Services (OXS) providing best practices for the length of the contract to ensure clients maximise their investment and continue to exceed customers’ expectations while staying ahead of consumer trends.
Supporting diverse clients of various sizes across all sectors, Odigo’s adaptability in catering first-rate, cloud-based customer outreach to fit different infrastructure and compliance requirements, while meeting tight deadlines, is second to none.
Some people say that embracing change isn’t easy-but these people haven’t worked with Odigo.
Customer experience as it was meant to be.
Odigo helps large organisations connect with individuals. It’s an omnichannel contact hub that cultivates value in every conversation – building happy, productive relationships between your people and your customers.
Neil TitcombManaging Director UKIOdigo
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No longer can organisations compete solely through the goods and services, or even price, they offer.
Instead, the customer experience (CX) has become a major differentiating factor. This is especially true during these challenging times when “business-as-usual” is disrupted. With businesses transitioning to virtual workplaces, it’s more important than ever to continue to develop new technologies and methods to pre-empt customer needs and provide timely, thoughtful solutions.
An integrated omnichannel communications experience.
According to Salesforce research, the average customer uses 10 different channels
to communicate with companies. So, how do organisations best serve customers when faced with the issue of accumulating information from various channels and people with different needs? One key solution has been to use digital chatbots with AI integration.
Chatbots and AI integration.
The job of the chatbot is to quickly determine customer needs and get them to the right live agent. Chatbots can use SMS, email and other messaging channels to communicate with customers effectively. Often they provide the optimal solution leaving the customer happy and hopefully encouraging loyalty.
Ensuring live agents record all communications with customers within Salesforce means AI and chatbots will be able to use similar patterns to determine the destination of future contact. This gives the live-agents the best chance of recognising cross-sell and upsell opportunities simultaneously freeing time to focus on complex CX resolutions.
Agent roles are becoming more strategic.
With AI integration, chatbots can determine the best solutions for customers. Already, they can deftly handle straightforward and simple queries. We expect them to be able to handle increasingly complex problems in the years to come.
This allows customer agents to focus their time primarily on more complicated queries, enabling them to deliver exceptional service.
Consequently, service providers will need to train their agents to a higher caliber that provides solutions for complex issues.
This allows for a two-pronged approach that ensures customers receive the proper level of assistance for their query; either a quick solution thanks to the chatbots’ intelligence or a detailed and comprehensive one from a well-trained and knowledgeable agent.
AI investment trends continue to expand.
AI is providing solutions across many business areas so it’s no wonder that many organisations are investing and trialing the new technology. According to the State of Salesforce 2019 report from Bluewolf, 56% of organisations are actively looking for ways to use AI. It has proven to be a huge time-saver, allowing agents to focus on important issues. AI allows businesses to acquire new customers quickly, cross and up-sell, identify more profitable customers and reduce cost on personnel. The current global health crisis has further underscored the need to invest in new ways of business continuity and AI is a considerable part of the equation. Businesses that acknowledge the potential of AI will prove to have great customer service that will encourage customers to come back again and again.
The guiding trends for CX in the contact centre.
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The value customers place on their experience with a brand or company is growing.
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Customer experience has taken on a new level of significance since the global downturn in the economy triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and worldwide introduction of remote working.
Uncertainty has touched every business, on every continent, resulting in a focus on customer experience being more important than ever. Customer retention is driven by customer experience, which leads to revenue protection. In order to deliver excellent customer experience, customer interactions need to be monitored, internal performance and processes analysed and service levels maintained, whilst continually evaluating to meet evolving business needs through these challenging times and beyond, in the new form of ‘business as usual’.
Ensuring that the right data gets to the right people at the right time is, therefore, crucial. By understanding everyday interactions and applying intelligence, critical business insights
can be shared on specific individuals, teams, departments and indeed across a whole business. For example, one business may need to understand customer experience across every touch point in the customer journey, whilst another may only want to manage a busy support queue. No matter the driver, as long as the insight provided is easy to understand and shared with key decision-makers then you can begin to relate historical and real-time analytics to business performance, and indeed to business strategy.
Driving crucial business decisions.Businesses that use analytics in this way can clearly see the impact of their processes, policies and performance on customer experience and focus on the KPIs that matter right now. With ongoing measurement and access to the right level of business intelligence, businesses can ensure that their teams – whether working remotely or otherwise - are meeting performance targets and service levels to deliver the best possible experience to customers.
In practice, a major focus for every business should be reviewing unreturned missed calls and a caller’s tolerance for waiting in a call queue. Are there patterns for when more calls are missed? How long are callers prepared to wait to be answered? How many missed calls are returned? Is it easy to speak to the right person on first contact? Armed with this information, organisations can resource their teams effectively by considering busiest hour analysis, or longer-term peaks and troughs of activity. It helps determine if more staff members are needed, or if their working day could be reorganised to solve a problem.
Managers should look for patterns of high-level performance and dig deeper with call recording evaluations. Who is spending the most time on the phone? Is it with the right customers? By determining which conversations are working best for a team, it is possible to reward top performers or help them to work more effectively, providing training to those that need additional support.
More informed decision-making not only facilitates agility in uncertain economic times, but also enables businesses to prepare for the next stage – whether it be returning back to ‘business as usual’ or moving forward as a leaner but stronger business – with more of a competitive edge.
With the right processes and feedback opportunities in place, employees, managers and business owners can approach future uncertainties with confidence, continue to provide high levels of customer service, and put them in the best position to thrive.
Tollring is running a series of webinars to show businesses how they can use analytics to manage remote teams effectively whilst delivering a consistent, excellent level of customer service during uncertain times. Register today.
Leveraging analytics to deliver excellent customer experience in uncertain times.
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GUEST BLOG
Every business wants to deliver a great customer experience, every time – of course.
CX has become an aspirational mantra, and the fact that every business talks about it tells you how hard it is to actually do. IT decision-makers need to keep this in mind when considering all the CX offerings on tap in this guide. Technology is often viewed as a silver bullet, and as good as these offerings may be, they can only enable CX at best – they are not the solution itself.
Vendors have certainly gotten religion around CX, and they all have a story for that. As a buyer, there is a lot to choose from – both legacy and cloud-based contact centre vendors, along with UCaaS players who have added contact centre to their mix.
To varying degrees, CX will be part of their value proposition, and to better evaluate all this, here are two things to keep in mind.
1. CX is an outcome, not a technology.
Vendors are focusing on the right problem set with CX, but that’s not what you’re buying. Regardless of the deployment model, you’re buying technology, and the rest is on you to deploy it effectively. No matter how good the technology, better CX only follows if everything else within your operations aligns around that. In other words, you don’t get better CX simply by upgrading to “the right” contact centre solution – so many other factors are involved, and most are human-based, and not driven by technology at all.
Better CX is the desired outcome, but you only get that when the underlying technology enables agents to have more effective interactions with your customers.
To ensure that, you need a holistic approach to CX, not just for agents and supervisors, but the organisation overall.
Having a customer-centric culture is the greatest determinant of CX, and if that’s not in place – or least evolving in that direction – it doesn’t matter which contact centre technology you buy.
2. Good CX is not your call to make, so measure it.
While CX may be central to a contact centre vendor’s value proposition, your customers decide whether your service is any better or not. As an IT decision-maker, you may have the experience as a buyer, and regardless of how well that goes with the vendor, it really doesn’t impact how customers feel about what you can now deliver.
If improved CX is going to be your success metric, then you need to develop criteria for pre and post deployment so the impact can be measured.
CX – remember, it’s their experience, not yours.
Jon Arnold Principal J Arnold & Associates
Part of having your own good CX when buying contact centre solutions is having the assurance that they understand the need for these success metrics. Look to the vendor’s track record and best practices for helping their customers measure CX improvement.
This will be a good indicator as to how well they can support you in getting that outcome, not just with their technology, but in understanding the particular needs of your customers.
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UCaaS and CPaaS for Enhanced CX.
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) has been top of mind for many Service Providers over the past few years due to demand from end users to have one platform that provides the primary communication tools they need on a day to day basis. However, UCaaS products can leave something to be desired by most end users as additional features and functionality, such as automations and CRM integrations, are becoming necessary tools for everyday work and productivity.
End users are now looking for one platform that can do it all rather than piecing together multiple systems to get everything they need. That’s why there have been a number of recent acquisitions in the UC space, and the market is heading toward UCaaS and CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) integration.
CPaaS entered the market as one of the biggest disruptions to business communications solutions since gaining widespread visibility in 2015.
Since then, the CPaaS market has exploded and is expected to continue gaining popularity and adoption. By 2022, it is expected to grow to an unprecedented $10.9 billion according to IDC as end users demand flexible and customisable communication solutions — one of the key advantages of CPaaS.
CPaaS is gaining massive traction, and for good reason. It delivers a newfound level of flexibility through APIs as businesses look to integrate more than just voice, text, and video capabilities into their products.
By leveraging CPaaS, Service Providers can extend their offering to any capable device and add to their ability to serve customers more holistically.
CPaaS also enables providers to differentiate themselves in the market because it delivers benefits including increased authentication, scalability, and flexibility over traditional UC solutions.
Service Providers can utilise APIs and integrations to create customised solutions for the specific industries or niches they target, such as hotels, construction, retail, etc. which is proving to be a game-changer.
Selecting a niche, focusing on research, marketing, and support for specific industries will help Service Providers win those customers’ trust and create a “stickiness” that can’t be outbid by cost.
These custom solutions can’t be easily replaced by mainstream competitors because they won’t have the custom capabilities that are helping end users work more efficiently, be more productive, and provide a superior customer experience. With CPaaS, you’re selling a solution, not just a product.
The ultimate UCaaS meets CPaaS technology built to scale.
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Enabling you to offer an unparalleled communication experience while evolvingyour next generation service offering and winning more business.
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Three ways partnering with a global communications enabler will improve the CCaaS experience.
The contact centre is an essential touchpoint in business, with 58% of customers citing customer service as a very important factor that impacts their choice of brand. Customer experience is considered a major opportunity for business differentiation as a result, but solutions must be fully integrated and flexible if they are to deliver long-term return. With 59% of customers acknowledging they have higher expectations for customer support now than they had just one year ago1, businesses must ensure reliable and globally unified communications channels if they are to truly compete on customer experience and get ahead of demand.
Contact Centre-as-a-Service (CCaaS) platforms are growing in popularity for this very reason; IP based, they enable businesses to integrate
communications channels, improve visibility and instantly update their service with new feature enhancements. But to maximise the advantage of a CCaaS solution, collaboration with a global communications enabler is beneficial in the following three ways.
1. Consolidate communications globally.
To improve the customer experience across an entire organisation – from multiple departments to geographically dispersed locations – a cloud platform must be underpinned by a robust SIP trunk that can support voice and other channels across a unified communications structure.
Through global SIP Trunking, contact centres can establish a local presence globally, enabling in-country communication whereby consumers can reach a brand’s contact centre by dialing a local number, or agents can reach-out to consumers proactively with a local CLI (Call Line Identification). This helps to establish a “Near Me” brand experience. SIP Trunking helps businesses adopt cloud-based infrastructure, safeguarding a consistent, seamless communications experience while unlocking opportunities to explore new markets and expand globally with less risk.
2. Improve quality of experience.
A cloud-based telephony infrastructure enables high-quality communications over voice and other channels to support omnichannel communications and improve quality of experience for pre- and post-sales support.
Contact centres can benefit from an extensive range of toll or toll-free numbers across countries to provide ease of access for consumers at very
low rates, or for free, regardless of location. Or, they can integrate mobile numbers for two-way call and messaging capabilities with customers for a far richer and more immersive experience all round. By collaborating with a global communications enabler to do so, CCaaS providers can rely on worldwide seamless connectivity and, in the case of BICS, extensive coverage in more than 120 countries.
3. Tap into a wealth of communications expertise.
By enlisting a partner with a heritage in global communications, CCaaS providers can take advantage of a range of additional benefits. Fraud, for example, is a growing concern within cloud communications, and so businesses are looking for a solution with comprehensive fraud prevention that is built in as standard. Drawing upon the wealth of knowledge and experience that operators have to hand, virtual numbers can be proactively protected from fraudsters at the network level with vital around-the-clock monitoring and increased visibility.
Likewise, the added analytical advantages of a centralised cloud infrastructure are considerable, enabling simplified access to usage metrics and transactional data that provide greater insight into customer service. This brings us full circle, aiding staff training and informing new ways to improve the customer experience that can be easily integrated in the cloud.
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Divya Ghai WakankarHead of Innovation & Product ManagementBICS
Simplifying business communications.
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CCaaS
Flexible CX delivered through the cloud.
As the demands for unique customer experiences in the contact centre continue to grow, and consumer trends change at a rapid pace, companies are quickly discovering the benefits of the cloud. Unlike any other tool in the contact centre landscape, CCaaS has the power to give business leaders the scalability and flexibility they need. With CCaaS, you can unlock the potential of new communication opportunities and CX strategies with unlimited agility.
CCaaS ensures that businesses of all sizes have access to everything from programmable CX strategies, where they can manage every aspect of the customer journey from start to finish, to reduced investment costs. It’s no wonder that 50% of the contact centres deployed from 2020 onwards will be in the cloud, according to Gartner.
Making the migration to CCaaS.
While many companies are beginning to see the value of having a scalable contact centre in the cloud, they also know how difficult it can be to transition from a legacy environment into a new area of technology. If you have a lot of existing investments in on-premise solutions for your contact centre, then you may not be able to switch everything over at once. This could mean that a hybrid solution could be necessary, to help you make a more phased transition instead.
CCaaS: This is Where the Cloud Contact Centre is Headed
At the same time, regardless of how quickly you’re thinking of moving to the cloud, business owners need to consider how they’re going to choose the right CCaaS provider for their needs.
How can you ensure that your CCaaS solution offers not only the deployment methods that you want, but the proper security, access to future features, and endless support too?
You may even decide that you want a CCaaS provider that can help you to align more components of your communication stack. For many business leaders, the ability to integrate UCaaS, CPaaS, and CCaaS solutions can allow for a more comprehensive single-pane of glass environment, where back-end and front-end communication is more aligned than ever. However, finding an opportunity that embraces various “aas” solutions can be difficult if you don’t know where to start.
Looking forward to the future.
When investing in their new CCaaS solutions, today’s business owners will need to consider how they’re going to take advantage of any new and improved trend designed to enhance customer experience.
After all, the purpose of CCaaS is to give your company an easy way of embracing new customer experience solutions. This could mean finding a CCaaS environment that comes with customer journey mapping so that you can create a seamless customer experience through every step of the buying adventure.
On the other hand, some businesses will be looking into AI, and how intelligent tools can take some of the strain off not just customers, but agents too. Artificial intelligence can provide clients with self-service solutions like chatbots or help route your customers to the right agent with the most appropriate knowledge to answer their questions.
There’s even the option to explore virtual assistants that will give agents access to more information in any environment, so that they can maintain context in conversations.
All the while, team leaders have the task of maintaining an informed and engaged workforce in an ever changing environment. This means investing in everything from the right training solution, to gamification strategies that keep your employees focused.
The path to CCaaS is an exciting one, but it requires some careful planning.
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According to research from PWC 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.
This means getting the customer journey right. When rolling out new digital channels any implementation needs to be in the context of the customer journey, with a focus on continuous improvement. A business should concentrate on the whole experience, encompassing all interactions across all channels, devices and touchpoints throughout every stage of the lifecycle.
Map the journey from your customers’ point of viewThink about what the different stages of your customers’ interaction with you are and what needs they have in each stage. That will then help you decide what blend of channels, touchpoints and devices is best at giving
your customers what they want. By doing this organisations can focus on providing the fastest journey time, with the least amount of effort and highest reliability.
Never layer in channels for the sake of itWe have seen businesses layering in as many new channels as they can. As a result, they fall short of maintaining the quality and consistency of the service they offer across all of them. Instead, the priority should be to get backbone customer interaction channels working to a high standard – those channels will generally include voice and email, but may also encompass web chat, web self-service, and capability within their own applications.
Ensure you have a full view of the customer interaction historyIt’s key that as channels are brought on stream, they are integrated to ensure customers get a seamless experience whatever channel they are interacting over, and critically, when switching from one channel to another.
Leverage the power of AIAs customers become more accustomed to digital technologies, artificial intelligence and advanced automation will gain importance in customer journeys. As early as 2011, Gartner was stating that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.
Machine learning will be crucial in the future. Systems that can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human
intervention are likely to have an important role to play in customer service. Chatbots can also be key in helping to transform the customer experience leaving more complex enquiries to the agents.
Empower your staffThere will always be engagements complex enough to require human involvement, for instance, a lost credit card or a cancelled flight – when customers invest a high amount of emotional energy in the outcome.” It’s important that organisations put skilled resources in place to manage these interactions.
Give customers the opportunity to self-serveBy providing self-service options, and thereby giving customers greater flexibility, organisations can further enhance the customer journey, making it easier for them to purchase or receive service from the business.
Don’t delay, take action todayEnghouse is a leading global supplier of customer interaction management solutions including contact centre, self-service, knowledge management, call recording and video applications. Get in touch to find out how we can help you plan your customer journeys.
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Gary BennettVP of Sales EMEAEnghouse Interactive
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According to new research by global market research firm IPSOS and high-end audio brand EPOS, 95% of audio end-users and decision makers experience pain points relating to sound that affect their concentration or efficiency at work, ultimately costing businesses money. In fact, “What?” is one of the most expensive words in business today. These findings and more are revealed in EPOS’ ‘Understanding Sound Experiences’ Report.
Wasting time.
87% of end-users say they have experienced at least one pain point due to poor sound quality during calls or virtual meetings. The most common problems include:
� Excessive background noise (42%) � Having to repeat themselves (34%) � Asking for information to be repeated (34%)
All result in frustration and wasted time.
How much time?
End users spend an average of 5 hours and 18 minutes on activities related to sound and meetings, whether virtual or face-to-face. Each of these interactions can be plagued by phrases such as “Can you hear me?” and “Sorry, can you repeat that?” if the sound or audio is not optimal. In fact, the average audio solution end user loses 29 minutes per week due to poor sound quality on voice calls.
Poor quality audio is expensive.
For employers, reduced productivity due to audio problems carries significant cost repercussions. For example, looking at the average annual UK / US wage according to OECD data, 29 minutes per week equates to £389.48 (UK) / $725.21 (US) of wasted expenditure per employee per annum. These financial outcomes could be far more serious than those 29 lost minutes of time. Organisations that employ over 100 people risk losing over $70,000 (US) per annum in lost revenue. If you’re running a call centre consisting of 250+ operators or similar, it is easy to see how these costs can skyrocket.
The cost of bad audio goes beyond employee productivity. Around one in five decision makers said it has also caused the following outcomes:
� Dissatisfied clients (23%) � Financial loss due to incorrectly undertaking a
task (18%) � Losing a key piece of work or a deal resulting
in financial loss to the company (18%) � Losing a pitch or tender (19%)
Forward thinking companies stay put.
Often, an effective audio or video call can facilitate an international meeting at a fraction of the cost of train or plane tickets. Among decision makers we surveyed, 45% cited time savings and 41% cost savings as among the three most important reasons for using video meetings or calls.
Already in 2020, remote working has become part of everyday life for many people. As a result, access to good quality video and collaboration tools is more important than ever before.
In many cases these solutions are the only viable option for communicating and staying in touch with colleagues, partners and customers.
Our EPOS team prides itself on delivering premium customer service and aftercare for all our products. If you have come to the realisation that bad audio is bad business for your organisation, get in touch now to find out how we can help. Request a complementary product trial and learn more about EPOS at eposaudio.com.
Bad audio is bad business.
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Think back to the last conference call you joined, or the last time a customer or colleague called you.
Did you clearly hear everything that was said? If you had to ask someone to repeat themselves due to bad audio, then you’re not alone.
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Synamedia’s success story shows how Teams coupled with Luware’s customer service solutions empower employees from anywhere, across country and regional borders, to serve customers effectively and conveniently.
Synamedia – changing the way the world is entertained.
Synamedia is changing the way PayTV operators, Telcos and media companies entertain and inform viewers. With their video platform, network, security and advanced advertising solutions, Synamedia is committed to providing the world’s most complete, secure and advanced end-to-end open video delivery solution.
Isolated customer service islands.In the past, Synamedia’s contact centres were run as ‘islands’ – separate departments with dedicated employees for North America, Europe
and Asia. Workload could not be distributed among the several contact centre and employee staffing was limited to department structures.
Contact centre with worldwide coverage based on Microsoft Teams.In search of a global cloud communication solution incorporating a contact centre, Synamedia found Microsoft Teams and Luware’s customer service solutions to serve their needs perfectly. Reducing complexity in the IT infrastructure was one of Synamedia’s major goals. Microsoft Teams and the Luware add-ons run in the cloud, require no installations and allow collaboration between countries and regions – also in the customer service. Employees can be assigned to multiple teams and they can take calls from several service numbers. Jo Ringrose-Voase, Microsoft 365 Service Owner at Synamedia explains: “They can serve customers from anywhere, and resourcing requirements and workload distribution can be met real-time.”
Call routing integrated into Microsoft Teams.“We were evaluating a number of solutions to solve the routing of our customer calls and to overcome the stiff structures of the past contact centre,” explains Jo Ringrose-Voase and adds: “Luware’s proactive support was key in our evaluation process. The deployment process of Luware’s add-ons is fast and the solutions can flexibly adapt to our needs.”
By using Microsoft Teams in customer service as well, no additional client is necessary, making
training obsolete. Luware’s solutions tightly integrate call routing and recording into Microsoft Teams. Jo Ringrose-Voase is content: “Employees like the added value to Microsoft Teams and can fully focus on customers.”
About Luware.100,000 users at over 200 customers benefit from Luware’s solutions every day – among them AGC, Credit Suisse, ERGO, Kuka, Konika Minolta, medical, Planzer, SAP, Swissbankers, Synamedia, UBS and Würth.
The backbone of our modern software and close customer relationships are 80 Luwarians in Switzerland, the UK, Germany, Belarus and the USA with a passion for simple software and high service quality. Driven by our customers’ needs, managed by our founders and in close partnership with Microsoft we have been developing customer service solutions for UC platforms for over 10 years.
Customer service with Microsoft Teams – today!
luware.com
Using Microsoft Teams for customer service is possible – today. Add-ons bring the necessary extras for routing with customer specific workflows, switchboards, service desks and even complex contact centres.
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David FischerHead of Sales EuropeLuware
Luware has been developing customer service solutions for over 10 years.
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ANALYTICS
A data-driven landscape is the way forward.
We’re living in a world that’s defined by vast amounts of data. Around 2.5 quintillion bytes of information are created every day, and that number is only growing. The good news is that in the communication and collaboration environment, data can be a powerful tool.
The more information that you can collect about your team members, your business processes, and your conversations with customers, the easier it is for you to create a more efficient and lucrative company. With the right analytics, you can pinpoint potential problems with your communication stack, understand customer sentiment, and even track the performance of your remote teams.
Knowledge is power.
Ultimately, the incredible volumes of data that we’re collecting today can give us useful insights into how various parts of our businesses are operating. The key to success is learning how to use your data correctly. For instance, it’s great to have a communication system that’s constantly collecting information about customer conversations. However, if you don’t have the workforce to go through that information and turn trends into actionable insights, you’re missing out.
Automating analytical strategies can be an easier way for businesses to tap into the valuable data
The Demand for Data: Analytics in Communication
that they’re collecting and use it to make valuable decisions. You could use your analytics alongside an artificial intelligence system to highlight potential strategies for improving the customer experience or streamlining the buyer journey.
There’s even the option to access real-time analytics that inform agents in the contact centre in real-time about things like customer sentiment.
When conversations begin to go south, intelligent tools can suggest strategies for improving the customer experience that may have worked before.
Going beyond customer experience.
The benefits of analytics in communication go beyond the basics of improving customer experience too. They can help informal contact centres to track things like the amount of time it takes to transfer one call to the right person, leading to more efficient call routing strategies. What’s more, the right analytical tools can help you to track the performance of your remote teams, so that you can keep employees productive and efficient, even when they’re outside of the office.
Many businesses are also looking into the possibilities of analytics in the communication landscape to support things like security and compliance.
Enterprises can use advanced analytics tools to ensure that their call recording systems remain compliant with the latest guidelines for data privacy and protection. It’s also possible to use things like biometric trends and algorithms to analyse every call that comes into your business, reducing the risk of toll fraud and robo-calls.
In a world where data is often the key to success for many companies, the question isn’t whether analytics and information are necessary – but how you’re going to implement them into your business. There are countless opportunities out there for brands that want to tap into the benefits of having more knowledge and insight in their organisations.
Whether you’re using analytics to defend your data, protect your customers, or just deliver a better experience for customers and employees alike, now is the time to invest.
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Satisfying the need for secure and reliable enterprise voice.
Mobile, video, social applications, and instant messaging provide consumers with a plethora of contact options. However, when the issue at hand is complex, or needs a quick answer, they will often choose a voice-based channel such as telephony or conferencing.
“Voice communications have always been a business-critical service which requires specific knowledge and understanding. As voice becomes ever more entwined with other applications, the importance of voice knowledge increases,” noted Ian Guest, Marketing Director at Pure IP. “In the face of so much change, it can be challenging for organisations to ensure they deliver a secure, reliable, multi-national telephony service that flexes with their changing needs.”
Getting the right voice services for your business is the foundation on which you can continue to build out an effective communications strategy. The right voice solution will provide you with the flexibility to take advantage of the many collaboration platforms and ‘as a service’ offerings available today, and ensures your business is equipped to meet changing market demands.
So, how can organisations build a reliable, secure telephony system that’s right for them?
The first step in identifying the right solution is a thorough evaluation of your business requirements. With a variety of technical solutions available, selecting the best one, and deploying it in the right way, will revolve around the business needs and strategies specific to your organisation. Considering factors like your Contact Centres, compliance, cloud strategies, mobility, and remote working requirements will help to define the most suitable voice service.
Deploying this solution will then involve balancing security, redundancy, resilience, and availability considerations, with adaptability, speed to delivery, and value. Will you use an on-premises, cloud, or hybrid model? Can you deploy it all at once, or would you prefer a phased approach? How will you support conferencing and integrate with call centres? What level of global coverage do you need today, and how might you expand in the future?
The answers to some of these questions might change over time, so beyond the technical capabilities of their solutions, the most important criteria for selecting your voice provider should be their agility, flexibility and reliability as a partner.
Technology is adopted at different paces to suit needs and so adaptability and integration compatibility are key characteristics you should seek. Investing in a relationship with the right voice provider, who can tailor and scale your solution as you grow can help ensure that you don’t restrict your options in the future.
About Pure IP.
Pure IP has been at the forefront of enterprise voice communications solutions around the world for over 15 years and takes pride in solving complex voice challenges, backed by outstanding customer service and technical excellence.Utilising its own secure, resilient and fully redundant SIP based voice network, combined with a technical-lead managed service, Pure IP provides a modular, flexible, and ever-current solution to meet ever-changing customer telephony requirements.
With full PSTN replacement services in 38 different countries, service coverage in a total of 90 countries and a 24/7 follow-the-sun international support operation, Pure IP has the global capabilities to satisfy even the largest of multi-national organisations.
Pure IP - Just Voice. Faster. Smarter. More.
Secure, reliable voice through a single network and provider.
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A secure, reliable and adaptable global voice network, global 247 support, fast provisioning, full PSTN replacement in 38 countries and coverage in 90.
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How to guarantee contact centre agent productivity when working from home.
The performance of your contact centre depends on the productivity of your agents.
When your team members feel empowered by the right support, tools and technology, they’re able to accomplish incredible things in any environment.
It’s now critical for business leaders to motivate and successfully manage their remote employees. Happier staff are more engaged and productive, and save businesses money not only in reduced overheads but also in lost business. For contact centres to truly benefit from a ‘working from home’ workforce, they must learn how to guarantee better productivity. Here’s some basic advice to help with that.
Provide AutonomyAs chatbots and artificial intelligence are introduced to deal with simpler queries, employees are free to handle a wider range of complex questions and challenges. Whether dealing with repetitive questions or complicated issues, agents will need some guidance from managers.
Make sure agents have the freedom to find their own way of working. Provide your employees with autonomy and they’ll reward you with new creative methods of problem-solving.
Ensure Easy CollaborationBeyond customer communication, the connections between your employees is also crucial. It’s important to have the right tools in place that enable team members to collaborate with specialists for help on complicated tasks. Staff who feel as though they have the support of their colleagues and supervisors to accomplish their goals will be more engaged and satisfied at work. RingCentral Contact Centre helps keep employees connected and enables instant collaboration between colleagues to keep things running smoothly.
Omnichannel EngagementEnabling agents to meet expectations should be a given for all contact centres. In today’s hyper-connected world, customer expectations are higher than ever. Customers use an average of seven different channels to connect with brands.
The only way to keep on top of that demand is to adopt an omni-digital customer engagement strategy, enabled by an aggregation platform that
unifies all your customer conversations. Equip your agents with the right tools, and they’ll be able to cut response times and increase first contact resolution rates.
Analytics & ReportingIt’s crucial to have proper visibility into the engagement levels and productivity of your workforce. Workforce optimisation tools are helpful for this, and using real-time monitoring can give you the instant feedback you need to be fully responsive to any issues that crop up.Use immediate reporting via dashboards to monitor your agents’ performance and use call logs, reports, and call recording to track the quality of customer interactions.
Empower your TeamIn an era where customer experience is king, contact centre agents are the key to transforming client relationships. Happy and engaged employees will deliver a better bottom line for your brand, and a more satisfied customer base too. Empowered by the right tools, employees can streamline their workload and get the information they need to deliver first contact resolution.
By meeting ever-increasing customer expectations, contact centre agents can set a brand apart in the marketplace.
Empower your business on a global scale.
RingCentral is a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions.
Sunny DhamiSenior Director of Product Marketing & GTMRingCentral
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In the experience economy, choosing the right channel at the right time and in the right context is everything. Businesses no longer dictate the channels used for customer engagement– you now have to interact with customers on their preferred channel and on their terms.
Digitalisation is changing the way we communicate, the way we cooperate and the way we consume. Today, we’re constantly searching, communicating, and checking in. Each action we take, no matter what the device, has the same ask: Satisfy me.
To keep up with these changing times, businesses and app developers everywhere are participating in the experience economy - where the experience they provide to customers can have just as much weight as their product, service or app itself.
Improving customer experiences using CPaaS.CPaaS offers a way of accessing and integrating engagement channels and end-to-end solutions, allowing you to interact with consumers across lines of business using a consistent approach they expect from an intelligent, interconnected enterprise. Using API-driven services and developer enablement resources, CPaaS makes it much simpler to add communication features into your apps and business processes connecting directly with consumers to enable more personalised experiences. Providers who can deliver SMS, social, e-mail and other channels and complete solutions including IoT, contact centre and business continuity help improve agility without extensive development and investment.
When should you consider CPaaS?For developers and enterprises trying to harness the ever-growing number and power of engagement channels and meet the expectations of the modern experience economy, CPaaS is increasingly becoming a necessity. In many cases, enterprises hold back from adopting CPaaS because of the existence of legacy systems. It’s easy to become comfortable with
what you have, but, in truth, it’s always better to have a single, unified system.
In the long-term, CPaaS will help reduce solution complexity while improving system resiliency by offloading your internally supported communication solutions.
Success Measures.When Infoways Pty Ltd decided to embrace digital engagement, they knew they would need a platform that provided configurable communications services and a reliable messaging network. Infoways manages 3 million SMSes and 2 million e-mails each month to engage current and new customers, with the help of SAP Digital Interconnect. As the growth of CPaaS continues, we anticipate an ever-increasing variety of use cases, as developers continue to take advantage of the vastly simplified communications tools it puts at their fingertips.
SAP Digital Interconnect is a digital engagement leader and its full-stack CPaaS portfolio streamlines the integration of multichannel communications and microservices into backend systems and apps to provide secure and reliable customer experiences for intelligent enterprises. With simplified access to APIs and enablement resources through SAP Live Link 365 mobile service, developers can easily scale to meet demand, reach global users and manage development and onboarding costs.
Accelerating customer engagement and experiences with CPaaS.
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Great contact centre leaders know that even in the best of times, reacting in the moment isn’t enough to create the enduring customer experiences necessary for brands to thrive.
It requires understanding the trends affecting behaviours and leveraging innovative solutions to deliver on evolving customer preferences.
When the completely unexpected—and unprecedented—hits, it takes not only the agility to react well to change, but also an understanding of trends that perennially guide good business practices and decisions.
At the beginning of this year, we used industry research plus interviews with leading analysts, customers, partners and prospects, to identify the
six most critical contact centre trends for 2020. We revisited them during the COVID-19 crisis and found they have withstood the test of time—and the global pandemic.
These trends, which start with the solid foundation of a cloud-based contact centre solution, are necessary for maintaining business continuity regardless of whether your agents work from home or in your contact centre. They speak to how to keep customers happy and agents productive. They also support a contact centre’s need to adapt to both an entirely new world and to the constant volume fluctuations in your contact centre.
Here’s a brief snapshot of each trend, or you can read our full annual report, 2020 Contact Centre Trends You Need to Know.
Trend #1: The Cloud Is Here to Stay
The cloud has already become the default choice for contact centres focused on improving customer experience, and its wide-ranging benefits have never been clearer. Now more than ever, the cloud has proven to be the most critical and direct way to future-proof an organisation’s success and elevate customer experience.
Trend #2: Adapting to Generational Workforces Is Critical
Gen X and Gen Z make up a growing percentage of contact centre employees. Understanding them is essential for any contact centre to thrive. This is important no matter where they work—in good times and in crisis.
Trend #3: Native Workforce Optimisation Solutions
No longer a nice-to-have, native workforce optimisation (WFO) is becoming a contact centre requirement for optimal customer experience. When stress is high and change is certain, fully integrated WFO is the most effective way to ensure workforce satisfaction, stability and productivity.
Trend #4: Goodbye Channel Divide, Hello Channel Unification
Channel unification is getting increasingly sophisticated—and necessary. It makes an agent’s work easier and more efficient while amping up customer choice and satisfaction.
Trend #5: A New Era of Metrics Focuses on Customer Experience, Not Just Agent Behaviour
Metrics that matter drive customer loyalty. Gone are the days when the focus was on agent behaviour. Measure customer experience instead.
Trend #6: AI Will Augment Agents, Not Replace Them
The most effective AI will make your agents better, not obsolete. When volume spikes and anxiety rises, high-touch customer experiences that only a human can deliver become even more important.
Learn more by downloading Serenova’s 2020 contact centre trend report.
2020 contact centre trends that stand the test of a global pandemic.
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SPEECH TECHNOLOGIES
Discussing the rise of speech technologies.
Despite the rise of video, instant messaging, and other modes of communication, speech is still one of the most critical components of the way that we interact. We rely on phone conversations with clients when we need to convey empathy and crucial information. We look into the nuances of voice to protect clients from issues like toll fraud and enhance experience through sentiment analysis.
Over the years, the technology that we use to leverage the true potential of speech has evolved at an incredible pace. Today, we know how to examine voices for everything from biometric markers for identification, to individual signs of emotion.
What’s more, we’re using our voices for more than we ever did before too. Now we can connect with machines through speech, using voice assistants that respond to natural language, just like another person.
The evolution of speech technology.
The rise of speech technology has changed the way that we interact on a fundamental level. Contact centres in particular have seen a lot of benefit from this sector. For instance, within the CX environment, you can use speech technologies to recognise a customer’s voice and
Speech Technologies: Let’s Talk About It
determine whether they should be given access to private information, reducing the risk of toll fraud.
Speech recognition can support customer service agents by delivering real-time translations and transcriptions when a voice is challenging to hear.
We even have AI-powered analytics available within the communication landscape to identify whether a conversation is going poorly or not. Voice assistants in the business landscape can identify a tone in a customer’s voice and instantly provide agents with advice on how to handle a conversation.
On top of that, we’re seeing the arrival of new self-service opportunities based around voice too.
As customers become more comfortable using things like Siri and Google Home to ask questions, conversational bots and IVR systems are making it easier for clients to get the information they need without ever speaking to a human agent.
The role of voice assistants.
Perhaps one of the most significant trends in the speech technology landscape has been the rapid arrival of voice assistants. In virtually no time, the entire globe has adopted voice assistant technology en masse, allowing us to get answers to questions quickly, and complete tasks faster. Not only can voice assistants help with customer self-service, but they can support employees in the business landscape too.
With a voice assistant in a meeting, a user could instantly start to record a session, or schedule a follow-up conversation for a time that’s suitable for both participants based on shared calendars in the cloud. Voice assistants can identify users in a meeting room so that they can load personal files without logging into a service, and they can pull up information for a business user in real-time when asked with a simple request.
Now that we can talk to machines like never before, the connection between the human and digital world is closer than ever.
We’re beginning to discover how connected and intelligent devices can make our lives a lot easier, more informed, and more engaging.
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Productivity and customer experience are part of the same challenge.
The modern world of business communications is and, in my opinion, should be based around the productivity of the staff and the efficient management of the call/message flows delivering the greatest possible customer experience. So, as we look to deliver all of that, the obvious key requirements are - choice and flexibility.
Two people doing the same job can require different solutions, simply because they are comfortable with different tools/devices. Two departments focused on different types of engagement may also benefit from very different technology applications.
The business however will want some uniformity, analytics and control in order to manage and evolve their performance. This is as true for a
5-person business as it is for 2000 strong team, but naturally the budgets may differ.
‘True Cloud’ represents the biggest opportunity for UK businesses to succeed in this challenge because, contrary to popular misconception, Cloud is not a location for servers or a route for communications. Cloud is a method of consumption, which leaves businesses free to plan, test, assess and tune the deployment of solutions until they achieve the optimum result. Moreover, as the world changes, and boy has this year proven how dramatically it can change, True Cloud leaves businesses fleet-of-foot and responsive to change.
If I am asked to put it simply, I normally just say that ‘True Cloud’ is any product, application or service delivered on a 30 day agreement, deployable on demand and equally swiftly deleted if the need changes, or it fails to deliver the target result. It puts the risk onto the supplier (the ‘trusted advisor’) and encourages a long-term partnership based on evolving needs.
I know of not one technology company that can deliver a best-in-class result across all requirements so blending tools, apps and devices together from a range of suppliers is a
healthy starting point. To do this, you must have an automated management platform that not only reduces the cost to deploy/manage services but also controls the commercial and contract rules - opening up options of self-service and, potentially, automated demand-based service deployment. This is why 80% of the VanillaIP personnel are based in the development team - creators and refiners of our Uboss multi-level, multi-vendor, multi-product cloud management platform.
The customer is king and they will choose when, and through which medium, they wish to communicate. Staff performance is based on inspiration, recognition and direction but it is also heavily influenced by happiness and that increasingly means comfort at work and work-life balance. Employers who employ the best people get the best results, so technology investment must cater for those demands as well as the demands of the customer, if the right human assets are to be attracted and retained.
It is an easy challenge to answer badly and a difficult challenge to answer well, not least because it changes every day, but as the focus on change increases, both in available technology and the human need, True Cloud providers, with broad portfolios, who actually believe in their responsibility within the big picture will prevail and the customer will benefit from their victory.
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Iain SinnottSales and Marketing DirectorVanillaIP
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