Customer Service

A secret to retail CX in 2022: The prepared contact center agent

By focusing on the well-being of customer service reps who interact directly with customers, retailers can transform the contact center from a cost center to the engine driving the CX strategy.

Photo by istock.com

September 9, 2022 by Einat Weiss

Over the last few years, retail has made a major shift in customer experience, considering every point of a customer's journey in CX strategy. Part of this shift has involved integrating an organization's contact center into its CX approach. When a contact center team is aligned with the customer experience approach, challenges can be addressed quickly when a customer reaches out for help.

In 2022, retail has a chance to shift again and begin considering the contact center as an extension of customer experience that goes far beyond serving as reactive problem-solvers. The workforce will be a key enabler of making this happen.

It's no secret that today's retail customers have higher expectations, but they're also more digitally savvy than ever before. Generational differences in comfort with digital channels all but disappeared during the pandemic, and customers of all ages now expect to be able to communicate with brands on the channels of their choosing and get their issues resolved quickly. Amid it all, retailers continue to wrestle with unanticipated spikes in demand — and the overstaffing and understaffing that can result.

This new reality has made the old ways of preparing contact center agents to meet customer demands obsolete. Today's contact centers must think differently about how they prepare agents to work and live in this environment. Customer experience is still very much dependent on the human element; technology like AI and machine learning support the people that serve as the face of a retailer's customer service function.

For brands and organizations to thrive, they must deliver the best possible customer experience, and agents must be prepared and well-positioned. Here's what you can do to make this a reality.

Help agents acclimate to the explosion of digital channels

As digital channels proliferated, they brought with them significant new challenges for workforce management. Customer service agents today handle both immediate response contacts, such as phone and chat, as well as deferred response contacts, like email and social media. There are often significant gaps between the customer and the agent's communications — for example, when a customer emails a request but then steps away from the computer before reading an agent's request for more information. During the time that elapses, the agent involved in the conversation may change, and the interaction itself can even move from one channel to another (for example, from phone to email or from chat to a voice call).

The demands of contact switching due to interruptions and simultaneous interactions on digital channels add to employees' cognitive load, or individual employees' abilities to juggle contacts and responsibilities. Consider ways to help employees manage cognitive load, such as setting a maximum capacity per employee (both in terms of overall total and per type of contact) and leveraging workforce management tools with algorithms that ensure that "low" loads do not take precedent over "high" loads, that dynamically define load per type of contact and that automatically adjust employee capacity as needed.

Empower agents with technology that engages and enables work-life balance

Nine in 10 people want flexibility in where and when they work, according to the EY 2021 Work Reimagined Employee Survey, and employee engagement improves significantly when employees are able to choose their work hours, according to the Society for Human Resources Management. The right technology can help agents feel like they have choice and autonomy to make their own decisions and balance out their life and schedule with flexibility. This increases employee engagement, and engaged agents provide better service to your customers.

Consider leveraging scheduling tools that give agents as much flexibility as possible — for example, incorporating agent preferences in the scheduling process or offering self-service tools that allow agents to self-select from preapproved options for extra hours or voluntary time off. You can also constrain specific skills usage to blocks of time to manage the burden of constant task switching due to the increased adoption of digital channels.

Respond in real time as conditions change to ensure that staffing is aligned with demand

When business is slow, agents get bored. And when demand spikes unexpectedly, agents feel overworked and stressed and KPIs are missed. While many retailers have resigned themselves to industry norms for overstaffing and understaffing in the contact center, it doesn't have to be this way.

Contact centers are increasingly using AI to re-forecast and re-simulate demand throughout the day and revise requirements as needed. Intraday management that leverages AI enables contact centers to reforecast and re-simulate demand throughout the day and revise requirements as needed, ensuring that customers are matched with agents who have the right skills at the right time, and on the right channel.

The engaged, prepared agent is your secret to retail CX in 2022, and smart technology can help you support the people who are the face of your brand. Help agents adjust to the new ways of working required to help customers who are increasingly reaching out via digital channels. Equip them with the tools they need to deliver the experiences today's customers demand, giving them choice and autonomy to make their own decisions and create a healthy work-life balance and ensuring that your staffing levels set them up for success.

By focusing on the well-being of the people who interact directly with your customers, you can transform the contact center from a cost center to the engine behind your CX strategy.

About Einat Weiss

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Prior to joining NICE Einat led product and global marketing in the telecom and tech industries. Einat holds an MBA with a focus on Marketing from the Technion and a BA in Computer Science from The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo.