Call Center Week Preview: 5 Pressing Customer Experience Questions We Need Answered

If you are one of the more than 2,000 contact center professionals slated to attend the 16^th Annual Call Center Week (June 15-19 in Las Vegas, NV), you are in luck! You will get to meet Call Center IQ director Brian Cantor and business development leader Olivia Wilson!

Moreover, you will also receive access to an unparalleled platform for answering the most important, most pressing and most perplexing contact center questions. Thanks to the event’s keynotes, case study presentations, interactive roundtables, networking functions and exhibitor consultations, you will have a myriad of diverse opportunities in which to present challenges and collaboratively identify solutions.

As only you know the true nature of your business and the true demands of your customers, you alone must decide actually which questions to ask. To get the thought ball rolling, however, we have shared some questions we believe should be top of mind for all CCW attendees. And as we share interviews and live blogs from the Vegas event, we’ll focus on the extent to which the speakers, sponsors and attendees answer these questions.

What is the balance between customer centricity and business centricity?

In an apparent contradiction, thought leaders will advise contact center leaders to "align operations with business objectives" while declaring "what is good for the customer is what is good for the business."

If there were fundamentally perfect harmony between business-centric and customer-centric objectives, there would be no need to actively align the contact center with the greater business. Such an alignment would be automatic.

Clearly, thought leaders accept the existence of disparities between how business stakeholders and how customers value certain strategies, processes, initiatives and investments. As a result, businesses will have to strike an optimal balance between the disparate, if not conflicting, objectives.

Since those in attendance at Call Center Week simultaneously serve as advocates for the voice of the customer and representatives of the business, the balance between customer centricity and business centricity should command ample attention.

How can a contact center achieve meaningful agent engagement?

We claim "happy agents yield happy customers." We revere brands that foster fun, exciting work environments.

Are we setting the bar too low?

During the recent Call Center Week Online event, presenter Tom McCoy (who is also presenting at Call Center Week in Las Vegas) stressed the distinction between agent happiness and agent engagement. The former speaks to an employee’s emotional satisfaction, but the latter speaks to a deeper connection between brand and employee.

That connection, McCoy stresses, is the foundation of a truly successful work environment. When an agent is engaged, he is able and willing to give the very best of himself to the organization. In a contact center environment, that means he is able and willing to create the best possible experiences for customers and drive the best possible results for business stakeholders.

Upon recognizing agent engagement as the real objective, contact center leaders must then ask how to actually achieve it. Endeavors like pizza parties and field trips, which are known for boosting happiness, are doubtfully sufficient.

Call Center Week represents an opportune environment for uncovering that answer. Strategies that mentally and technically condition an agent to best perform are the ones that need to take precedence. They are the ones to acquire while on site.

How do you properly serve customers in an omni-channel world?

The contact center world continues to operate without a straight answer to the channel question.

Some say businesses need to be wherever their customers are – and thus need to offer engagement in all conceivable channels. Others argue that the priority is not offering all channels but assuring that the channels a business does offer are seamlessly integrated.

Others, still, advocate for an alternative in the form of right-channeling: routing customers to the channel most appropriate for the situation (even if it conflicts with customer preference).

With more than 2,000 professionals in attendance, Call Center Week will surely play host to all of those perspectives – and many more. Through peer discussion, benchmarking and collaboration, each guest should be able to hone in on a channel strategy that is best suited for his unique business and customer base.

What about the day-to-day?

Since a successful customer experience requires collaboration from all business stakeholders, a big picture approach is essential.

Adopting that big picture approach should not, however, cause businesses to overlook day-to-day management challenges. It very often does.

In order for a contact center to optimally contribute to the business’ overall customer experience vision, it must assure its day-to-day operations are themselves optimized.

Cognizant of the contact center’s big picture importance, Call Center Week also provides an unparalleled opportunity to get back to the basics. Through discussions with peers, participation in sessions and interactions with solution providers, attendees can focus on actual contact center management tasks like training, volume forecasting, performance measurement and workforce optimization.

By getting the day-to-day right, contact center leaders assure their departments are making the best possible contribution to overarching business goals.

What is on the horizon?

The customer experience community often finds itself playing catch-up. Customers began communicating via multiple channels, so businesses reacted by introducing multi-channel customer care. Agent frustration and attrition plagued the contact center environment, so businesses reacted by making the agent experience a business priority. Social media armed customers with a greater ability to voice concerns, so businesses reacted by investing in customer centric experiences.

A reactive approach, unfortunately, removes the competitive advantage associated with customer service initiatives. Once customers are demanding certain experiential elements, there is nothing uniquely valuable about offering those elements.

As a breeding ground for progressive customer experience thinking, Call Center Week offers an opportunity to get ahead of the curve. By understanding emerging technologies and by gauging what fellow businesses inside and outside one’s industry is doing, an attendee can take a proactive approach to the customer experience. He can leverage existing technology and ideology to elevate the service his business offers and consequently establish it as a preferred destination for customers.

Call Center Week is an excellent event to learn what one should be doing in his contact center. True leaders will also use the experience to determine what they can be doing.