How to Scale and Run Customer Service Effectively During Crisis Situations

The most important lesson COVID-19 has taught every business that manages customer service experience in some form or other is that their success hinges squarely on their capability to scale. Your ability to communicate with customers and address their demands in their channel of choice seamlessly, at no extra cost to yourself, will determine whether you will survive or perish - not in a distant future, but very soon. 55% of companies have attested that not having such scalable digital solutions will impact their market share adversely, within a year.

That has put most banks, insurers and other financial institutions across the world in a quandary since the time the pandemic has swept the world. They are unable to run contact centers at full-scale because of the mandated precautionary lockdowns and self-isolation; this at a time when customers are restive with queries and requests for help. The call center workforce productivity has plummeted while unresolved call volumes have skyrocketed. For the foreseeable future, the only imperative for CTOs and customer experience management executives is to implement digital deflection solutions as a part of their technology roadmap to recover until  businesses are fully operational. 

Currently, only a few enterprises are trying to scale through innovative use of technology, but the majority is struggling in their bid to keep the customers engaged during these pandemic days. It doesn’t have to be that way. Enterprises can deliver customers a pleasant experience if they can figure out ways to engage them through multiple online channels in a timely fashion. 

A three-pronged approach to enhance customer experience  

Reduce Call Wait Times Through Alternate Channels: Research says that 75% of the customers get annoyed and interact in an aggressive tone with agents when they are kept on the queue for a long time or when they do not get access to the representative immediately. The best way to address this dissatisfaction is to provision alternative channels. Facilitate a means to open a new channel of interface for the waiting customers through an instantaneous Text/SMS/Email response, and seek their consent to receive a call back to cut the long IVR queue. This will help save the customer’s time as well as your overall call of business. 

Decrease Inbound Call Volume: Instead of customers calling your contact centers, proactively communicate with them. Digital deflection offers the facility to enable various self-service channels that customers can reach out to and get the information they need. This is a great form of delivering outstanding experience. You can both educate them about your products/services/offers as well as resolve issues through the digital channels.  

Automate Regular Inquiries Through Predictive Analytics: The more you know why customers reach out to the agents, the better you can automate inquiries. Gather data to create predictive scenarios on queries, categorize the requests and divert them to different channels. Contact centers must plan based on the data on customer behavior derived through digital deflection technologies.

The shift to low-cost digital interactive solutions like SmartAssist is doubly useful for enterprises as it enables them to serve customers better by responding swiftly while reducing their operational costs. It helps you route calls to multiple cost-effective channels, easily integrates with your existing technology systems and allows you to set-up  predefined rules intelligently based on the customer history. This way you can manage the communications coherently without disturbing the existing infrastructure  and provide 24*7 support even during times of unprecedented demand.

Check out our on demand webinar "Reimagine Your Contact Center Experience with Low-cost Digital Solutions" on how you can consider deflect for your needs.