‘Tis the season to innovate: Optimizing your contact center for the holidays

Contact center traffic grows exponentially during the holidays, but not every customer interaction is great. Wait times become longer, agents get overwhelmed, seasonal hires are often undertrained, and overburdened systems slowdown, frustrating customers during an already hectic time.    

Contact center innovation is crucial not just for succeeding during the holidays, converting new customers into loyal ones for the new year, but for ongoing success in a rapidly changing landscape. As your organization gears up for peak profit season, what kind of CX enhancements will boost performance and win customer loyalty? 

Integrate digital channels to provide a seamless and consistent customer experience.

Be honest: do your customers have to repeat themselves across multiple touchpoints and juggle different channels without clear direction? 

Consider these service scenarios:

• A customer contacts support via chat about an issue. They follow up by calling the contact center only to find the agent has no record of the previous conversation, requiring them to repeat themselves.
• A customer orders a product online and receives an email confirmation. When the product is delayed, they receive no notification. They call the contact center only to find out the product has been on backorder, fueling frustration. 

Fragmented digital experiences make customers run, whereas customers will spend 70% more with brands that provide a seamless experience across all points of contact. CX success hinges on connecting everything – voice, video, chat, messaging, and more – to deliver effortless experiences for customers and employees at every touchpoint. 

Deepen your approach with customer journey orchestration. Customer journey orchestration goes beyond simply mapping touchpoints. It involves strategically coordinating every interaction a customer has with your brand to ensure consistency and relevance at every stage. 

Empower agents with a single source of truth to improve and accelerate outcomes. 

Outdated agent tools can’t meet the demands of today’s customer experience landscape, especially during the demanding holiday season. 

What you need is a cutting-edge, unified WebRTC desktop. Accessible from anywhere, this intuitive desktop simplifies the recruitment, hiring, and training of seasonal staff all while ensuring a consistent and seamless user experience.

• Simplify information searching with the ability to aggregate data from various sources including CRM systems and third-party apps, streamlining interactions and making life easier for your agents.
• Empower your team to focus on what matters most. With a more efficient setup, they can significantly reduce call handling times and boost overall productivity.
• Enable your agents to juggle multiple interactions at once, directly improving KPIs with better service delivery.
• Equip your agents with a 360-degree view of all interactions across all systems – cloud and on-premises – for more informed responses (a.k.a. more satisfied customers).
• Design a desktop layout that fits your agents’ unique needs, optimizing their workflow.

Unlock even more potential by fostering employee connectedness. Bring together teams, resources, and insights to supercharge contact center performance and even better customer experiences.

Leverage AI to enhance call management and customer insights

From workflow automation to performance monitoring and insights, AI is your not-so-secret weapon for streamlining operations and gaining a comprehensive customer view. 

Here are four ways to put AI to work this holiday season:

AI Noise Removal: Ensure crystal-clear communication regardless of where conversations take place.

• Deliver clear, crisp call recordings with near-perfect transcripts. 
• Elevate customers’ experiences by delivering outstanding call quality regardless of where agents are working. 
• Cut through the noise (literally) to resolve customer issues faster.

AI-Powered Workforce Engagement: Enhance agent effectiveness and customer interactions from a single desktop view.

• Empower agents with tools for live monitoring, keyword spotting, sentiment analysis, and more to better assist customers.
• Monitor real-time call progress and step in when needed to provide support.
• Use AI-generated word clouds to identify hot topics, key trends, and customer sentiment insights.

Virtual Agents: Scale your support capabilities effortlessly while maintaining quality service.

• Use natural language tools to replicate a live-agent experience; provide intelligent self-help and seamlessly escalate calls to live agents when needed.
• Send call context and history with all escalations, plus have your VA mine agent-led conversations – providing ongoing suggestions and fetching relevant information throughout.

Make customers want to stick with your brand year-round

Integrate these CX enhancements fast, securely, and cost-efficiently with Avaya Experience Platform. Harness innovation in time for the holidays without disrupting operations. See how.