A few years ago, Xavier Niel stated in Society magazine: "Employees in call centers are the workers of the 21st century. It's a horrible job. The job they do is the worst of jobs."
At ViaDialog, this caught our attention because we have been familiar with this industry since 2005. We therefore decided to analyze this situation in detail for a clearer understanding...
A clear and undeniable finding
A quick tour of a contact center is enough to see that tele-agents spend their days juggling between different application windows, their telephone handset, headset, keyboard, and smartphone.
Each of them opens at least 5 standalone software programs, sometimes up to 10, to switch from one contact channel to another (phone, email, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, etc.) or to navigate through CRM software, ticketing, ERP, and other in-house applications. A true obstacle course, marked by high pace, First Call Resolution objectives, average wait times not to exceed, maximum handling time to respect, and satisfaction indices to meet at all costs!
Whether they are on-site, teleworking, or offshore, the same labor and the same languor. Not to mention the time spent in training, steering committees, and daily debriefing. And so, yes, call center agents are indeed the new workers of modern times.
Their assembly lines are now queues of customers, and if their tools are no longer metal presses, they are now sophisticated software. And that's where the problem lies. Each window is standalone software, with its dropdown menus, graphics, notifications, and... its own logic. The paths to accomplish business actions are long, re-entering information is frequent, and information is fragmented.
Offering clients multiple contact points, whether via phone, email, SMS, or WhatsApp, has become essential to provide the best possible customer experience, but this requires deploying dedicated software for each channel.
To achieve a 360° customer view, it is necessary to know all usage statuses, the reason for today's contact, be able to access the history of all past contacts, be capable of retracing the thread of conversations conducted by email, chat, etc., and finally reconstruct their navigation before reaching the customer relationship center, with impatient and solution-demanding customers on the other end of the line.
Adverse consequences for contact center agents...
This situation leads to two major consequences: permanent stress for the agent; recurring dissatisfaction for the client.
As commerce becomes more demanding and competition ever fiercer, agents must master all these components to access the right information, take the right actions, and report without delay. Self-care does indeed spare them a host of interactions, but it must be acknowledged that the phone remains the prime channel for quality service, favored by the majority of clients.
Meanwhile, clients are one click away from another provider, share their experiences on forums, rate customer services and products through publicly shared reviews, and never hesitate to sharply criticize any merchant slow to respond or off-topic in their response.
In light of this, we at ViaDialog have given much thought to how to resolve these frictions. And in this quest for the "Zen Screen", we have found truly innovative and original ideas….
To be continued in the next episode
Article updated: December 27, 2021
