“Is business created for customers, or are customers created for business?” If you ask yourself this question, you will find that the former is the right answer.
Legendary management guru Peter F. Drucker articulated the idea quite succinctly, which summed up the concept of customer-centricity. “It is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.”
Over the last few decades, a majority of organizations, especially the customer-facing ones, want to become customer-centric.
As per a poll conducted by the CMO Council, 87 percent of business leaders asserted that customer-centricity is a key priority for their organization.
As per a study jointly conducted by Deloitte and Touche, customer-centric companies are 60 percent more profitable compared to the non customer-centric ones.
But what exactly is customer-centricity? In the words of noted academician Peter Fader, “Customer-centricity is a strategy that aligns a company’s development and delivery of its products and services with the current and future needs of a select set of customers in order to maximize their long-term financial value to the firm.”
As an owner of a contact center, if you are keen on building a customer-centric culture in your contact center, this blog post is just for you. In this post, we will explore six essential strategies that can help you build a customer-centric contact center.
So, without further ado, let’s dive right into the blog post and discuss the six essential strategies. Read on and thank us later!
1. Invest in Sophisticated Call and Contact Center Software
As per world-renowned digital anthropologist, futurist, and author Brian Solis, “Customer centricity starts by investing in a culture of putting the customer first. Technology then amplifies your purpose so that it creates and extends value to those seeking it.”
Technology plays a huge role in ensuring customer-centricity. As Airbnb’s co-founder & CEO Brian Chesky rightly said, “Technology is not just a tool; it’s the foundation of modern customer experience.”
The very first thing you must do to build a customer-centric culture in your contact center is to handpick the right call center software and contact center software. Even though it may be challenging in such a crowded and competitive market, you can make the right decision if you invest quality time and a little effort on research. Look for a contact center software provider with a solid reputation, strong track record, and years of experience in delivering high-quality solutions.
While looking for various contact center software solutions, focus on integration. Make sure the software can integrate with CRM, omnichannel platforms, and various other business applications and third-party platforms. Ask for a free trial and use the demo version of the contact center software for a reasonable period to make an informed decision.
2. Ensure Omnichannel Communication
A contact center that doesn’t support omnichannel communication can never be customer-centric. A study conducted by SDL revealed that 90 percent of customers expect consistent interactions across channels, such as email, live chat, or self-service portals.
Keeping that in mind, contemporary contact centers must invest in the right omnichannel contact center solutions and omnichannel CX suite to deliver seamless customer experience across all touchpoints.
As a majority of people use smartphones, contact centers must optimize for mobile. As per a stat published by Superoffice, a European supplier of business-to-business customer relationship management software, on its website, 84 percent of companies that claim to be customer-centric are now focusing on the mobile customer experience.
3. Leverage AI and Automation in Your Contact Center
Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) help contact centers to be customer-centric? It certainly can. The advent of advanced AI has revolutionized every sector. So, how can it not transform customer-facing businesses?
Generative AI tools have been proven effective at mimicking the way humans interact. That means they can provide high-quality and lightning fast customer support at scale, much more efficiently than human agents.
AI and automated customer support tools such as AI-driven chatbots, AI-powered virtual assistants, predictive analytics, and more, can help handle routine queries. The use of AI-tools can free up human agents to focus on more complex problems and queries.
Tools such as AI sentiment analysis can help contact centers analyze customers’ emotional state and tone. Some AI tools can also be used to analyze customer interactions and data. That can be extremely useful in providing agents with real-time insights and recommendations.
4. Focus on Agent Training and Empowerment
In the previous point, we discussed the power of AI and automated tools and how they can eliminate mundane and repetitive tasks in customer service. However, no matter how advanced such tools become, they can never replace the power of human touch in customer service. As noted IT industry veteran and thought leader Enamul Haque rightly said, “Al is not about replacing the human touch but enhancing it.”
An organization’s culture is as good as its employees. When an organization invests adequate resources, time, and efforts in ensuring that its employees are well-trained, then nothing can stop it from building a customer-centric culture. As John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft, rightly said, “Empowered and well-trained employees are the heart and soul of delivering outstanding customer experiences.”
That’s why you must make sure that your agents are not only well-trained about products’ features but also have a high level of emotional intelligence and necessary skills such as empathy, conflict resolution, active listening, and more. In addition to that, you must ensure that your agents are well-equipped and empowered to make decisions that can enhance customer service.
5. Leverage Data and Insights
Customer data can prove to be extremely useful in making an organization customer-centric. That’s only natural. The more an organization knows about its customers, the better it would be able to serve them. So, it would not be an exaggeration to say, customer data is indispensable for customer-centricity!
When agents get the right types of data, they are better able to make data-driven decisions. Not just that, they are empowered to take customer-centric actions and make decisions keeping customers at the center of everything.
That’s where sophisticated call center software, contact center software, and omnichannel CX suite solutions can come handy. By leveraging the right call and contact center software, contact centers can access analytics and customer interaction data in real-time and make decisions based on customer behaviors, preferences, and past interactions.
Everything Said and Done,
For every contact center, building a customer-centric culture should be the first and foremost goal. As noted management consultant Robert Half rightly said, “When the customer comes first, the customer will last.”
When contact centers and customer-facing organizations prioritize what customers want and expect from them, they can be able to deliver high-quality customer experience. And taking the help of modern technology is one of the best and most effective ways to do it.
Every contact center must handpick the right call center software and contact center software. They also need to integrate AI-powered technologies such as AI-enabled chatbots, virtual assistants, and sentiment analysis. Contact centers also need to train and empower their agents to make customer-centric decisions.
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