News from the Call and Contact Centre Expo, 22- 23 November, ExCel, London
Leaders focusing on customer experience and call centres, came together for the Call and Contact Centre Expo, forming new partnerships and tackling the most pressing issues facing call and call centres today.
Exhibitors included leading full solution UCaaS providers such as Gamma, 8 x 8 and Ring Central. With consultants from Injection Consulting and Solid Rock Consulting. Messaging platforms such as Twilio and WhatsApp, and voice technology specialists Verbio.
There were a number of thought provoking, insightful speakers and a stand out panel discussion looking at the ‘future of the contact centre,’ which echoed the main themes throughout the show that day. With a brilliant mix of panellists, including representatives looking after customer experience, from companies such as the Cotswold Company, Oner Active, Air France KLM and Cut and Wrap.
Panel agrees: agent churn most pressing issue for call centers
With the aftermath of COVID, and the current economic crisis, the panel agreed that the most pressing challenge facing their call centers and customer experience, was the issue of recruiting and then retaining customer agents.
Additionally, that agents needed good on-boarding and training, as the skill-set of an agent had changed, as customers expected really good service. This means that good agents need to have empathy and good problem solving skills to deal with complex customer problems. In turn, they need excellent supervisors to help coach and train these agents.
The role of the supervisor has now changed from functional duties, but more to offering good pastoral care and check ins. These supervisors also have the added issue of potentially managing isolated home workers as well as on premises agents. The panel discussed different ways they could recruit new people to the industry, such as offering flexible part time shifts that could work around employees’ side hustles and family lives. Other ways to support agents included daily check-ins and making sure that agents are supported immediately after difficult calls.
Given the high concern around customer and agent churn rates in the call & contact center industry, Verbio decided to take action. We have produced a White Paper on the topic of Solving Contact Center Agent Churn, which is free to download and includes information on years of internal research and development. Download for free today!
Verbio COO gives insightful speech on potential churn solution: Conversational AI
Verbio COO, Jordi Torres, gave an insightful speech at the Future of the Call Centre stage on Day 2 of Call & Contact Expo 2022. In this thirty minute talk, he introduced Verbio to attendees, before discussing the potential for Verbio’s Voice AI technologies to help agent churn rates.
By allowing human-to-machine interactions to go ahead with Verbio’s Call Automation solution, call centers can operate 365 days a year, 24/7. This reduces stress on out-of-hours workers, but also reduces the amount of repetitive tasks that the agent must endure. Thus, allowing them to handle the more complicated calls. Ultimately, this rewards agents with a higher sense of job satisfaction, meaning they will likely stay at the business for longer.
You can watch the full speech from the London exhibition below.
Future predictions were made by the panel and other industry experts. Namely, one significant way to reduce agent churn would be to include AI and virtual voice assistants to support human agents. Significantly, it was agreed that AI should, however, not replace the agents.
The perfect blend of human and machine would help customers to self-serve, 24 hours a day. Meaning that thousands of calls a day could be directed to virtual voice assistants, dealing with large volumes of tedious repetitive tasks.
This could reduce boredom and frustration for human agents and means they can focus on more complicated customer queries, using their empathy and problem solving ensuring excellent customer service. Making the job more enjoyable and more appealing to people could help to recruit and retain agents and potentially reduce agent churn.
