contact center WFO tools helps companies empower their agents with the tools and knowledge needed to understand the specific needs of each client as they progress through the journey.
For example, using a unified agent desktop would help agents to access relevant customer insights needed to interact with a client during the onboarding process. The same agent would use the unified agent desktop to access different types of data as the customer has progressed within the loyalty phase. So, it's accurate to say that WFO helps companies bridge the gap between agent activities and evolving customer expectations as clients progress through the journey they have interacting with the business.
SCS: Is the use of analytics another trend or is it considered part of a WFO solution?
OM: There are different types of analytical tools contact centers have at their disposal. These include traditional analytics such as business intelligence, as well as, increasingly, predictive and prescriptive analytics. Use of analytics overall helps companies better understand the trends and correlations revealed by customer feedback and sentiment data captured across different touch points.
However, before applying analytics, it's critical that companies utilize database management tools to better integrate their structured and unstructured data to facilitate building a single view of the customer interactions. This is important as clients interact with the business across different channels, and not all data captured across all channels are structured.
Once the integration of structured and unstructured data is ensured and the company streamlines data flows across different enterprise systems, it's important to put the findings gleaned through analytics into practice.
The use of analytics is not confined to WFO, considering the benefits associated with these activities. While they certainly help companies do a better job in improving agent productivity and performance, they also help in better understanding customer interaction processes and help tailor omnichannel experiences based on the needs and wants of different customer segments.
SCS: What is something in the contact center market that you think should be changed for the better?
OM: I anticipate and hope that there will be more collaboration between customer service and marketing. As contact centers are becoming more multichannel and are trying to move into omnichannel in delivering consistent interactions, they should also understand that marketing plays a key role in interacting with the customer.
Over the next several months, I hope that as more companies look to delivering more consistent messages across all the touch points, they're going to be looking at aligning customer service calls with marketing. This is not just about aligning goals but also activities—do they work together, do they have common key performance indicators used to evaluate their performance? Do they have the same visibility into the enterprise systems so that they can share data in a timely way?
SCS: Any final thoughts about trends in 2015?
OM: More companies are not just looking at the business value of omnichannel or why they need it, but how they can put the necessary pieces in place to get omnichannel customer experience management right. So, I believe the trend in 2015 is going to be expanding the current discussions around business value of omnichannel customer care and putting best practices in place that actually help companies accomplish the desired results.