We are midway through 2022. Contact center trends that were forecasted at the beginning of the year have had sticking power and we have seen a common theme emerge as the months have passed. The theme: Strategic organizations are centralizing their operations around consistency.
Call centers and contact centers are fast-paced environments with a variety of tasks, processes, and team members. However, due to these fast-paced environments, things can also easily fall apart quickly. High call volumes, long queue times, over or understaffing issues, and customer escalations are just a few examples of how a perfectly regular day in a contact center can turn ugly. Call center management is a complex skill to master, but fortunately, with the right tools, strategies, and mindset, the skill becomes more achievable.
In recent years, the customer service industry has been upended with pandemic-related challenges. In particular, call centers and their teams have had to quickly adapt to new work environments, technological barriers, high call volumes, and increased customer escalations, just to name a few. And as organizations continue to navigate and adjust to the expectations of their customers and employees, certain call center customer experience trends have come to light.
When you are communicating in person, we have much more than words on our side to help us get our point across. Body language, facial expressions, hand movement and gestures, and of course, our tone of voice help us deliver our message the way we intend it to be understood. So much of human communication is non-verbal and helps our brains figure out the context and meaning of messages. When we communicate over the phone and no longer have those nonverbal cues on our side, suddenly our word choice and our tone of voice become increasingly significant.
If you have ever read any of our other blogs (which we highly recommend) you might notice that we use the terms call center and contact center interchangeably. We do this because we provide software that can benefit both call centers and contact centers but there is actually a difference in business application.
Anyone familiar with call center management knows that keeping a close watch on metrics is a must when running efficient operations. There are dozens of call center Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be tracked but ultimately, it comes down to measuring what is most important to your team and business goals.
Whether your team has gone permanently remote, returned to the office, or you are working in a hybrid model, everyone seems to be struggling with how to engage their employees in a meaningful way that doesn’t come across as “forced fun” or “mandating culture”. So we’ve compiled a list of some popular ways to cultivate participation, engagement, and connectedness within your organization regardless of your industry, or if your team members are in office or remote.
Call center managers supporting their team members is more important than ever before. With the great return to the office lagging for many businesses across the country, it’s safe to say that remote work is here to stay, at least for the time being.
We love the optimism and the hopefulness that beginning a new year brings. Individuals ruminate about self-improvement practices. Businesses try to forecast what is ahead of them and craft strategies to support those forecasts. Being a call center analytics software company, this is our favorite time of year at Brightmetrics™.
Yes. You read that right.