In the recent "State of the Contact Center" global research report by Calabrio, it was revealed that contact center interactions significantly impact brand loyalty for nearly 100% of consumers.

This report, based on surveys of contact center managers and diverse global consumers, highlights the key to future success: empowering the contact center as a brand guardian.

We sat down with Nick Smith, Vice President of Sales at Calabrio, to get his take on what this insightful report reveals about future trends and changes we can expect to see as an industry.

Tell us about this report – what motivated Calabrio to conduct this global survey, and what were the objectives behind it?

Every year, Calabrio sets out to establish what’s really important to contact centre leaders, their top challenges and developing trends. Previous ‘State of the Contact Centre’ surveys track quite a ride – from the lockdowns and incredible disruptions of 2020 to the proactive move to the Cloud in 2021.

For our latest survey, we dug deeper, surveying 250 contact centre professionals and 250 consumers across a broad range of industries to assess the impact of the ‘New Normal’ on customer service organisations today. Our goal was to understand the key expectations, perceptions and beliefs around contact centre experiences and test them against consumer perspectives to identify consensus and reveal gaps. Only that way, can contact centres have an accurate compass to guide their journey towards improving the employee and customer experience for maximum business impact.

What were the most revealing insights you took away from the research findings? 

From everyday conversations with our own customers, we knew that consumer perspectives provide meaningful validation to many contact centre beliefs, assumptions and priorities. However, what we weren’t prepared for was a total mismatch in some areas between what customers think and what their contact centres think. These disconnects are the most telling because they reveal powerful opportunities to bridge gaps, improve performance and elevate the brand experience.

Our “State of the Contact Centre 2022 – Empowering the Contact Centre as Brand Guardian” research report makes it clear that the defining themes of the pandemic are here to stay: rising expectations from customers as well as from within the enterprise while simultaneously juggling the challenges of remote and hybrid-working. Probably the most powerful discovery for us was that nearly 100% of consumers says contact centre interactions impact their brand loyalty.

How does the Australian market compare to the identified global trends in this report, what are the key opportunities/trends for Australian contact centres?

In our experience, organisations everywhere face similar challenges and share the same kind of aspirations. For example, our report shows that contact centres need real-time performance visibility, but that data silos – often caused by multiple, disconnected systems - are holding them back. The biggest concern is that it’s trickling down to customers with 71% of consumers recognising these data silos through their own contact centre experiences.

Like many contact centres around the world, organisations like SPARK, New Zealand’s largest telecoms and digital services company, continually strives to deliver a consistent response and high level of service to customers across multiple channels while simultaneously empowering frontline staff to manage their own work/life balance. The latter is particularly important when you consider that 83% of contact centre managers say workforce challenges such as agent stress and remote/hybrid working are impacting the brand experience for their customers.

High-profile companies in Australia, such as utilities giant Greater Western Water, join our other customers around the world in relying on Calabrio to maximise agent performance, exceed customer expectations, and boost workforce efficiency. Competencies that have now attracted industry recognition from APAC-based market analyst firm, Quadrant Knowledge Solutions (QKS) who has positioned Calabrio as a Leader in their SPARK Matrix: Workforce Engagement Management (WEM), 2022.

Empowering the contact centre as a brand guardian is the key theme in this report. What's your advice for organisations looking to reposition their contact centres – where should they start?

Interestingly, understanding the connection between good customer service and brand loyalty is one area that both contact centre managers and consumers agree on! Calabrio’s latest research reveals that 97% of consumers say customer service interactions have a definite impact on brand loyalty while 88% of contact centre managers agree that brand perception directly drives overall revenue growth.

To build a team of brand guardians that deliver amazing customer experiences, we recommend a few simple steps to getting started:

• Agent empowerment is the name of the game so encourage frontline staff to perfect a compelling storyboard that makes your product or service offering stand out from the crowd. Take charge by offering agents practical coping mechanisms for dealing with unhappy customers. Knowing when to use the word ‘sorry’ sincerely (rather than to pause a difficult interaction) and closing conversations with a positive resolution of, "let's see how we can put this right," are simple ways to boost agent confidence and brand guardianship.
• Focus on soft skills because today’s brand guardians require a broader skillset to meet rising customer expectations for fast, efficient service with a human touch. Reassess agent training programmes, blending traditional hard skills such as speedy resolution of customer problems and product knowledge with softer skills. Focus on the top five behaviours that are the hallmarks of good customer conversations: empathy, helpfulness, adaptability, active listening and patience.
• Inspire and motivate team members through gamification by offering rewards to those who share their customer successes and learning with others. A quick Zoom call at the beginning of the day or an online video that can be watched at leisure is all it takes. This gives everyone the chance to embrace their new role as brand guardians while customers will pick up on their positive energy and enthusiasm.

Follow these simple steps to fast-track your way to brand guardianship.

The report references how contact centres can be proactive rather than reactive customer support. What does this mean, and how can contact centre leaders implement it in their strategies?

We really believe that consumers expect more and forgive less and we have the statistics to prove it. 3 in 5 consumers say they have switched brands due to negative contact centre experiences. Half want to be recognised across all channels and touchpoints while 74% of consumers say feeling known by agents increases brand loyalty. Now is the time to take a proactive approach to customer support. What is more, contact centres have a unique opportunity to own the brand experience and drive a customer-centric culture across the whole organisation that boosts all-round business success.

Quite simply, this is because the contact centre is a goldmine of customer information which can be transformed into valuable business intelligence using technology based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). For example, powerful CX insights from within the contact centre can help the marketing team understand brand awareness, competitor influence and the overall effectiveness of their campaigns. Sales can quickly identify new opportunities for renewals, referrals, and cross-sells while the finance department benefits from insights into billing issues, refunds, and credits.

Meanwhile, your frontline teams can benefit from Voice of the Customer (VoC) analytics to deliver stellar customer experiences. They give a complete understanding - in real-time - of end-to-end interactions, including mood, so they can proactively adjust their behaviours in an instant. They can even anticipate a customer’s future needs and what channels they prefer to use based on their conversation history.

The disparity between customer and employee perceptions of contact centre performance was an interesting insight discussed in the report. Why do you think this is and what can we do to improve?

Primarily, I think this has a lot to do with the way contact centres traditionally measure their performance. Take Average Handle Times (AHTs). The theory goes that a shorter Average Handle Time (AHT) is a helpful indicator of agent productivity because the more interactions agents handle, the more customers they serve. However, low call duration is not necessarily a good thing: it can mask a lack of agent capability as more knowledgeable and confident colleagues go out of their way to deliver the best service possible, which leads to longer call times. Ultimately, longer AHTs that boost customer satisfaction or NPS scores might actually be better for business.

Our report shows that Nordic contact centres are way ahead of their peers in meeting consumer expectations so what do they do differently and what lessons can we learn from them? In the region, there’s a far greater focus on personalisation, recognising the customer across channels, making them feel known and trying to never make them repeat information.

Other lessons include gaining senior executive buy-in to invest in and drive CX improvements across the organisation; using AI and ML to drive benefits in all areas (agent performance, customer satisfaction and operational efficiency); and placing greater emphasis on targeted training combined with offering increased pay and using remote/hybrid work models to attract the best agent talent.

Looking ahead at the evolving mix of engagement channels (phone, email, social media, etc.), how do you think organisations can ensure they’re using the right channel at the right time for the right customer?

Managers’ rankings of channel importance are nearly the exact opposite of consumers. In general, managers greatly overestimate the importance of innovative new channels like apps, social media, and self-service knowledge centres while they fail to recognise how important traditional channels like phone and email still are. For example, 57% of consumers believe voice is still the most important means of communication in influencing brand perception versus 39% of managers, while only 26% of consumers think social media is important versus 44% of contact centre managers.

So, although customers may expect to use many different channels, blending them effectively with traditional channels like voice and email is essential. It’s not just about adding more channels, it’s about designing how your customers want the experience to flow and feel.

Consider the end-to-end customer journey, which will normally start online but will likely involve a mix of digital and voice channels. Change the mindset from self-service OR human-assisted to a more realistic, blended one where the customer can critical to success so link all new channels to contact centre WFM and QM systems and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or WeChat.

Finally, don’t forget to train staff with personalised coaching on different channels to elevate their performance. Then, make the most of Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solutions to ensure the right-skilled agents deal with the right customers at the right time for a truly seamless, omnichannel customer experience.

How do you see these trends shaping the ever-evolving contact centre industry? Any major disruptions or opportunities on the horizon?

We see two distinct game-changing opportunities for contact centres to boost performance and staff engagement. Firstly, WFM is accelerating the path towards effective remote and hybrid working and employee engagement by addressing two of the top contact centre workplace challenges: how to alleviate the ‘operational difficulty of remote and hybrid working’ (at 40%) and ‘high attrition/turnover’ (at 38%).

It’s the perfect opportunity for organisations to adopt hybrid scheduling and become an employer of choice for rising contact centre stars. The latest WFM solutions can predict best shifts and agent fit for a complex hybrid-working, multi-channel environment. Data-driven AI allows planners to pre-plan their remote situation rather than just know in their own mind that agents are working from home.

Meanwhile, app-based self-service scheduling empowers agents with flexibility and control. They can quickly add days of work, move breaks or lunches, and trade partial-day shifts anytime, anywhere using their mobile devices. Conversations with Calabrio’s own customers indicate that agent-self-scheduling usage has rocketed – up 200% - in the last 12 months.

Secondly, we see a distinct blurring of lines between WFM and QA to optimise contact centre performance. For example, WFM self-scheduling solutions encourage high levels of self-awareness so if an agent knows they aren’t at their best first thing in the morning, they can volunteer for more afternoon or evening shifts. The best contact centres will think differently, perhaps using quality scores to impact schedules rather than create schedules based purely on agent skills. They blend WFM and QM systems with automated performance coaching to develop a robust QA framework that continuously identifies skill gaps, improves training, and monitors agent performance over time.

About Nick Smith

Nick Smith is the Vice President of Sales Asia Pacific for Calabrio, a leading global Workforce Engagement Management Provider.

A seasoned sales professional, Nick has over a decade of experience in the contact centre and customer experience industry. He started his career in the UK as a resource partner before transitioning to work with vendors. His deep and practical understanding of the contact centre industry enables Nick to translate vendor speak for organisations as he supports them to identify opportunities for innovation and technology implementation.

Nick has seen great success in developing successful partnerships globally. As the head of the APAC sales organisation for Calabrio, he is now focused on driving growth for the region and disrupting established players in the market. A strong advocate for optimising workforce engagement, Nick is committed to helping organisations deliver exceptional results, challenging the status quo and pushing innovative design.

About Calabrio

Calabrio is a trusted ally to leading brands. The digital foundation of customer-centric contact centres, Calabrio helps enrich and interpret human interactions, empowering the contact centre as a brand guardian.

We maximise agent performance, exceed customer expectations, and boost workforce efficiency using connected data, AI-fuelled analytics, automated workforce management and personalised coaching.

Only Calabrio ONE unites workforce optimisation (WFO), agent engagement and business intelligence solutions into a true-cloud, fully integrated suite that adapts to your business. For more information visit Calabrio