{"id":59669,"date":"2020-12-22T08:45:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T07:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visionarymarketing.com\/?p=59669"},"modified":"2023-03-25T08:01:46","modified_gmt":"2023-03-25T07:01:46","slug":"contact-centres-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visionarymarketing.com\/en\/2020\/12\/22\/contact-centres-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 threatening contact centres with extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contact centres might be threatened with extinction. Covid-19 changed digital experiences for businesses and customers to a point that the new normal for contact centres may be no contact centres at all.\u00a0A few weeks ago, I interviewed\u00a0Adrian Benic, VP Products at Infobip, a telecommunications and IT company with a Worldwide footprint and headquarters in Croatia and London. Adrian told me that, despite all the talking, building digital experiences wasn\u2019t a reality. Yet, Covid-19 changed everything and the CRM digitisation process<\/a> was considerably sped up.<\/i><\/p>\n

Covid-19 threatening contact centres with extinction<\/h2>\n
\"Covid-19
Contact centres under a threat of extinction Adrian Benic says, as Covid 19 reshaped an entire industry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Caption: Most businesses think they are building digital experiences for their customers but they aren\u2019t, Adrian Benic told me. Covid-19 has changed that ball game radically.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Despite all the prattle about digital transformation, not even mentioning the buzzword bingo regarding digital experiences, \u201cwhat most businesses are really doing is building add-ons to existing experiences, add-ons that are by nature broken in terms of the journeys that their consumers are taking\u201d Adrian told me.<\/p>\n

Many businesses are behind in terms of building digital experiences<\/h3>\n

\u201cWhat happens is that the online contact support team might work until five and after that consumers are stuck without help because everyone is getting ready to leave the office\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, people that might be working the evening shift might not be available on the channel that consumers expect to find them on.<\/p>\n

Support centres that are closed when consumers are available, deliver an awful digital experience<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sad reality\u201d Adrian Benic went on. \u201cWhen you think about it from the consumer standpoint, no one really wants to waste time on a website and talk to one\u2019s telco support staff to upgrade one\u2019s plan or any other chore.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Experiencing any form of inconvenience is already the beginning of the end of a good customer experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSuch businesses aren\u2019t really customer-centric. They pretend they are, but all they achieve is filling in their own pockets.\u201d Adrian said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Harsh words, but the truth hurts, sometimes, as the saying goes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Changing behaviour imposes new tools<\/h3>\n

This changing behaviour has an impact on the kind of tools that people are using, and we are not just talking about plain-vanilla social media platforms. The aim is what one could call a messaging ecosystem<\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One needs to build the \u201cnew WhatsApp or Viber or WeChat for the customer relationship world\u201d Adrian said. \u201cWhen you think about it, there’s a whole ecosystem that could serve a consumer\u2019s needs: from finding the service to talking to a business, and consuming and paying for it, everything could be found within the same ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about WeChat in China, for example, with which you can go to a grocery store, buy vegetables and fruits and pay with your mobile phone. \u201cTo those people, it\u2019s as easy as selling apples or oranges,\u201d Adrian said. But what about the rest of the world? \u201cIf such platforms are so successful in China, and attract so many consumers and generate a lot of business, why aren\u2019t businesses adopting them at a much faster pace anywhere else?\u201d He wondered.<\/p>\n

Messages come from anywhere, one never knows in advance<\/h3>\n

The key is to ensure that the person at the receiving end doesn’t actually need to worry about where messages come from\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are two areas to take care of.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n