By: Alok Kulkarni, Co-Founder and CEO of automated CX assurance platform provider, Cyara
People
Outcomes, not hours
- The pandemic has taught us that we don’t all need to be in the office all the time to get work done. The focus has shifted to outcomes, not hours. The expectation that people are going to come back to the office is still there, but companies should focus on delivering a safe, hybrid environment if they want to retain their employees.
Shift in employee priorities
- I don’t necessarily think there’s going to be a ‘great resignation’ but if companies start taking things away from people, such as going for an afternoon walk or spending more time with their families, it might become a different story
Industrialised remote workforce
- Companies are going to continue an innovation trajectory post-Covid because the remote workforce has been industrialised. Covid has brought the technology and security teams that we deal with front and centre to enable this change to happen
Technology
Boundary-less contact centres
- When you think about a call centre you think of people in cubicles, squashed together handling enquiries – that’s the image that comes to mind. Now, people are working from their home. The pandemic has created ‘boundary-less’ contact centres which means:
- Companies can now hire in regional Australia, which is always a challenge without incurring a huge infrastructure cost
- They will be able to realign the workforce to deal with customer related enquiries at specific times of the day, rather than only when the branch or office is open
- Companies can bring more people back onshore because the cost equation is rebalanced. Often real estate costs are the biggest component of choosing offshore teams
Time for chatbots to shine
- Expectations are high for AI as we head into 2022. Any company that has chatbots needs to ensure they do what they are supposed to do otherwise it’s going to be very deflationary and frustration-inducing for customers. We’re currently going through a period where customer expectations and chatbot performance do not align. There are so many chatbots out there but sadly some are not that smart. If you don’t offer customers a seamless experience of moving from one digital channel to another with context, there’s a high risk of losing that customer.
Customer expectations at an all-time high
- We’re going to experience a transient boom as Australia opens and the economy wakes up. I say transient because a lot of people have saved money through lockdown, interest rates are at record low and demand for talent went up through border closures, so people have had pay rises. I think we’re going to see a huge surge in spending as people feel wealthy. However, when people get busier, demand increases, supply dwindles, and customers get less patient. Expectations are going to be at an all-time high. If people get held in a queue for a long time it’s going to end up being very challenging, and uncomfortable for contact centres.
