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When we talk about the "customer experience", some also think "customer journey" and mistakenly use these interchangeably. These terms can be confusing and difficult to follow, but it’s actually a simple distinction. First, yes, they are two different things. Second, yes, they both require your attention. What’s important to realize is that the journey is much more insightful for business planning and growth because it offers a more detailed look at every move the customer makes.

So often your employees are completely overwhelmed by the large scope of varied tasks that they need to complete within a day, that it becomes so easy for the finer details to fall through the cracks. Unfortunately missing the finer details can result in bigger issues such as lawsuits, due to lack of employee compliance. I have seen the negative ripple effect that this can have in a business, in terms of generating more legal costs and placing more pressure on management.

We live in a real-time world. We get flash-sale notifications in real time, get real-time alerts for every bank and credit card transaction in real time, know how many “likes” we have on a social post in real time – heck, I even know when my daughter’s diaper has been changed at daycare in real time (evidence that there is such a thing as too much real time). So why shouldn’t agents get real-time coaching, improvement feedback, and performance insights?

There's more than its products contributing to Wine Country Gift Baskets' growth. The company’s philosophy informs its everyday practices, which are built around a family-based culture, relationships, the quality of its interactions with customers, and the tools it provides to workers. And with baskets being ordered by and shipped to customers all over the world, the company’s contact center is central to its customer satisfaction and success.

Life in the contact center can feel like a collective emotional journey, and that was never more true than in 2020. You and your customers rode the waves of the uncertainty that defined the year. There was disruption like never before. Contact centers had to adapt quickly to serve customers who were anxious and seeking help. Contact center traffic was also inconsistent and unpredictable. Combine this with the need to suddenly disperse the workforce to their homes and it was a rollercoaster of a year! Ready to prepare for the unexpected? Here are five ways to plan, prepare and provide for your contact centers, your agents and most of all, your customers.

Contact centers build in some downtime for agents during working hours due to lulls in incoming calls because of the occupancy level needed to realize their service level goals. It’s a balancing act: Keep employees busy, but don’t overwork them. But how do you know when busy becomes too busy?

Globally, organisations experienced major business disruption over the course of 2020, and for contact centres, it was no different. Across the industry, we’ve seen a significant shift in the way that contact centres are managed, and how leaders and agents are responding to changing customer behaviours and needs. This shift will likely continue as we settle into the new normal and will impact two of the key factors in how we Work from Anywhere: people and technology. Discover the seven emerging and developing trends that will continue to change the way contact centres work in 2021 and beyond.