3 Critical issues facing contact centres today and how to overcome them, the latest blog from Puzzel

Thomas Rødseth reviews Puzzel’s three most popular 2017 contact centre white papers

During 2017 Puzzel published a series of white papers. Debating some of the hottest issues in the contact centre industry, these documents were originally designed to create an interactive Puzzel community by providing a platform for discussion and encouraging learning and knowledge-sharing among customer service professionals. The three most read white papers are an interesting barometer of what matters most to contact centre leaders, therefore we have compiled them into our first “Puzzel Book”, something we hope will become a firm and favourite Puzzel tradition.

The 2017 edition will help contact centre leaders to gain fresh perspectives along with a few takeaways to implement. In particular, organisations will:

•Discover 20 strategies and initiatives to improve employee engagement
•Learn how to work smarter not harder
•Keep up with the next generation of customer service in the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Top three white papers and trends at a glance
The final trio of white papers that make up the new Puzzel Book illustrate three critical issues facing contact centres everywhere.

1.20 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement in Contact Centres

So what is the significance of having highly engaged employees? According to Gallup’s February 2017 report “State of the American Workplace”, it’s a hugely important factor in everything from reducing employee churn and absenteeism, to improving productivity and customer experiences.

Its US research revealed:
•73 per cent of ‘actively disengaged’ and 56 per cent of ‘not engaged’ employees are looking for jobs or watching for opportunities, compared to 37 per cent of ‘engaged’ employees
•Highly engaged business units result in 21 per cent greater profitability
•Highly engaged business units realise a 41 per cent reduction in absenteeism and a 17 per cent increase in productivity
•Highly engaged business units achieve a 10 per cent increase in customer ratings and a 20 per cent increase in sales
In this White Paper, we suggest 20 strategies and initiatives to improve employee engagement.

2.How often is your contact centre the cause of inbound customer contacts?

That’s a question which can change everything. From how the contact centre sees its role, to the kudos it receives from the rest of the organisation. However, it’s quite a journey from where most contact centres are currently operating, i.e. as a dustpan and brush cleaning up after the rest of their organisation.

Today’s customer expects a lot for their loyalty. Reactive customer service is therefore yesterday’s game plan. Nowadays, working smarter rather than harder is the name of the game.
This White Paper lays out a framework to help you realise an effective service strategy.

3.Everything you need to know about Intelligent assistants, bots and self-service for your contact centre

In 2016, the world woke up to the reality of Artificial Intelligence following a series of news announcements from some of the world’s technology giants - Microsoft released their bot framework; Facebook opened up its Messenger platform for bot building; Google introduced its own Allo messenger and voice-enabled home speaker to keep pace with Amazon’s successful Alexa and Echo combination and Apple opened up iMessage to third party integrations and announced the Siri development kit (SDK).

Puzzel’s white paper outlines the brave new world of AI and aims to trigger a discussion about how your own contact centre fits into the overall context of intelligent assistants, bots and self-service. It then offers some survival strategies on how to keep up with the next generation of customer service.

The first “Puzzel Book” is available now. For a copy of the 2017 edition and to view Puzzel’s complete series of white papers, visit www.puzzel.com

Thomas Rødseth, is VP of Product and Marketing at Puzzel.

About Puzzel

Puzzel builds on 20 years’ heritage. It was one of the first pioneers to develop a cloud-based contact centre. Puzzel also encompasses leading mobile messaging and mobile payments to deliver a flexible and customisable customer interaction platform to meet the needs of today’s omni-channel and mobile environments. Puzzel can be adapted to accommodate from one to several thousand agents using any device, in any location and integrates with multiple applications seamlessly.
Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Puzzel employs people who are all passionate about delivering innovative customer interaction solutions for contact centres and mobile environments.

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