The recent COVID-19 pandemic created tectonic shifts in global business. Faced with the prospect of losing human life and strain on healthcare resources, national and local regulators around the world adopted various emergency measures to try to curb the sudden spread of the virus in their communities. While COVID-19 is one example of disruption to contact center activities, firms must be ready to address numerous potential changes that may impact their activities in order to ensure business continuity in meeting and exceeding client needs.
During times of uncertainty and abrupt stop of economic activities, for brands to survive — and then thrive during recovery — it’s vital to retain customer trust and loyalty. Being able to address customer needs without interruption is what separates top-performing contact center leaders from peers that struggle with quickly adapting to the changing business climate. The good news is that leading contact centers share a common set of competencies that serve as a roadmap for all firms to ensure business continuity and survive the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other future business disruptions (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.).
Business Continuity: 5 Core Competencies
- Enable Agents to Be Fully Productive Through Remote Work
The first step companies must take is enabling employees with the tools to do their jobs remotely. Next, they must ensure that they can communicate and collaborate with others in the business using these devices.
- Use Cloud Technology to Rapidly Adjust Your Capacity
Cloud technology allows rapid change in contact center capacity to handle sudden changes in customer demand. This agility is vital to retain customer trust at times when clients need responsiveness from product / service providers.
- Minimize Economic Uncertainty by Moving from Fixed Technology Costs to Variable Costs
Aberdeen’s Contact Center 2019 study shows that firms using a cloud contact center platform enjoy 51% greater annual improvement (decrease) in service costs (7.1% vs. 4.7%), compared to their on-premise counterparts.
- Monitor, Measure, and Manage the Performance of Your Remote Agents to Ensure They Achieve Desired Results
One of the important things to remember when ensuring business continuity is to maintain focus on achieving the priorities driving contact center activities even when operating through a fully-remote or blended (part remote & part in office) work environment. Using desktop analytics is especially useful for contact center leaders as it helps lift the curtain on productivity of remote agents by providing visibility into how agents spend their time managing the agent desktop.
- Boost Agent Engagement While Removing the Barriers of Remote Work
Once the above building blocks are in place, the next step for contact center leaders must be to ensure agent engagement. One of the many ways contact centers ensure agent engagement in a remote work environment is use of gamification programs that tie achievement of company objectives with rewarding agents with non-financial incentives. Since agents have a direct impact on CX results, this means that using gamification also influences agent activities in creating happy customers.
Key Takeaways
The circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented. Faced with requirements to limit physical interactions across the public, firms have fast-tracked their digital enablement programs. While the true effects of the crisis are yet to be observed, firms must continue operating by addressing the needs of their customers to survive the crisis — and thrive in the aftermath.
Through analyzing the performance of organizations that excel in ensuring business continuity at times of uncertainty such as the recent pandemic, we discovered that the five characteristics in this post are vital to remain agile in the face of changing business needs. We suggest that you review your current activities by comparing them to the above competencies to minimize the risk of disruptions and retain customer trust and loyalty.
Want to learn more? Watch our analyst research spotlight video: Executive Overview: How COVID-19 Impacted CX Programs
