Driving Growth with a Customer-centric Contact Centre (+7 Bonus Tips)

Did you know, experience-driven businesses have 1.7x higher chances of retaining their customers than other businesses? Not just that, the businesses that created great experiences for their customers see their revenue jump 1.4x faster than their competitors.  

What does it all boil down to? Customer-centricity.

‍What is Customer-centricity?

Customer-centricity means putting the customer at the center of everything you do. Your business is customer-centric when:

• Your products and services are designed using insights from customer behavior, needs, and expectations.
• Your physical and online stores deliver unique and engaging shopping experiences.
• Your customers have multiple ways to connect with your representatives across the channels they use most.

Customer-centricity is not limited to customer-facing teams. Excellence begins at the top of the organization. Business objectives must be tied to a customer-centric vision. This requires the right technology, data, and an agile transformation model.

What Does Customer-centricity Mean for Contact Centres?

You might wonder how a shopping mall relates to a contact center. Individual stores in a mall are like the distributed components of a contact center:

• Distributed Teams: Product, Marketing, IT Support, Customer Support, Finance, and HR.
• Multiple Channels: Facebook Messenger, phone, live chat, WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat.
• Siloed Databases: Research data, marketing campaigns, and interaction history.

In this context, a department store represents an omnichannel contact centre. It serves as a point of convergence for everything from groceries to electronics. It provides a unified, safe structure for customers to interact.

For most businesses, the contact center is the hub for managing customer experiences. It is more than just a place to handle complaints. An omnichannel contact center acts as an experiential hub where:

• Customers resolve doubts and complaints.
• Customers share feedback and suggestions for product improvements.
• Customer-facing teams create upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
• Internal teams gather actionable insights.
• Long-term relationships and loyalty are built between the brand and the buyer.

7 Tips to build a Customer-centric Contact Centre

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1. Foresee Customer Needs

When you anticipate a customer's needs, you can tailor your support and offers. An omnichannel contact center allows you to pool data from multiple systems. It bridges the gap between traditional tools like calls and modern digital channels like social media or video calls.

This helps you cover every customer persona. For example:

• Imagine a customer is browsing "deals" on your site and searching for a denim jacket.
• They then ask a support agent about ongoing offers via live chat.
• The agent can use this browsing history to offer exactly what the customer wants in real-time.
• This makes the customer feel understood and valued.

2. Collect Customer Feedback

Collecting feedback is essential for improving your business processes. It provides insights into customer preferences and pain points. Since customers use many channels to share reviews, an omnichannel contact center is vital. It:

• Unifies all communication channels on one platform.
• Gathers feedback from social media, phone, email, and web forms.
• Labels unstructured interactions with contextual tags for easier analysis.

3. Partner with Your Customers

Include customers in the process of improving their experience. You can use a unified communication solution to gather suggestions via social media, email, or SMS. A contact center provides real-time visibility. This allows you to act on feedback and shape your products to satisfy your users.

4. Get Your Data Together

An omnichannel contact center centralizes interaction data into a single database. It also lets internal teams bring in the business tools they need for daily tasks. This eliminates the need to jump between different platforms.

• It presents a complete picture of the customer's profile and purchase history.
• It makes it easier to map engagement outcomes to actual business value.

5. Involve All the Teams in the Process

Exceptional experience is not just the responsibility of the support team. If a product fails to meet expectations, "sweet talk" will not retain the customer. Every team must help enhance the experience:

• Marketing: Uses interaction data to create targeted campaigns.
• Product: Uses feedback to understand and exceed customer expectations.

Business leaders must think beyond traditional practices. Do not limit contact center tools to just the service team. Involving all business units gives you a competitive edge.

6. Improve AX (Agent Experience)

A unified platform simplifies an agent's workflow. It prevents them from having to switch between different channels. This reduces frustration and overtaxing.

• Agents get real-time insights into the customer journey.
• Access to centralized data and tools prevents burnout.
• Agents can personalize interactions and address issues proactively.

7. Localised Support

Communicating in a native language creates trust. In fact, 57% of customers say obtaining information in their language is more important than the price. Localizing your services sets you apart as a market leader.

A unified solution helps you use:

• International Toll-Free (ITFS) numbers.
• Local DID and Universal Toll-Free (UIFN) numbers.
• Smart omnichannel routing for 24/7 support.

Localisation is more than just translation. It is about adapting content to the local culture. It also involves your caller ID. Customers may mark an "alien" or unrecognized number as spam. They are much more likely to answer and trust a local number.

You do not need a physical office in every region to go global. You can equip remote agents with local understanding and modern tools. This allows you to deliver localized experiences across the globe from one central location.

Choosing the Right Omnichannel Solution to Power Your Contact Centre

Your business may have various goals, such as first-time resolution or boosting advocacy. To reach these goals, you must equip your team with a solution that increases productivity.

When evaluating a solution, do not just focus on the customer. You must also prioritize the employee experience.

CINNOX is a powerful, unified solution. It gives you the flexibility to set up a contact center in minutes. It empowers your business with the agility to scale globally and enhance every experience.