Chatbots. Twenty-four-hour availability. Social media. Contact centers certainly have changed. And the expectations surrounding them are changing as well. Contact centers are no longer viewed as call centers, but as engagement centers where brands must consistently meet customer expectations of fast, quality service over any channel they choose, whether it be the phone, email, instant message, video chat, or mobile apps. A 2016 study by Aspect and Conversion Research uncovered staggering figures: In the last year, about half of consumers surveyed quit doing business with at least one company that delivered poor customer service.

If you worry your contact center is missing the mark, we have some recommendations for how you can meet customer expectations.

Self-service can also be self-serving

Many customers, especially those in younger generations, want to avoid phone service if possible. They are great researchers that can find answers to many of their own questions if provided the proper channels. Self-service options are an important channel so these consumers may find solutions to their own problems. If implemented well, self-service is not only efficient, it’s also effective which will build customer satisfaction with the brand.

Some of those support options include:

  • Easily-navigable FAQs
  • A website that’s optimized for search
  • A detailed bank of tutorial and support content
  • Automated task management platforms

Adopting self-service options like these will help turn your customers into their own troubleshooters, which can lower operations costs for your business.

Agent specialization for better experiences

If customers can act as their own troubleshooters much of the time, the interactions that do involve agents are likely to become more complex i.e., specialized in nature. Agents are typically prepared to manage issues related only to certain subject matters. If contact centers don’t take this into account, they’ll likely face rampant transfers and poor resolution rates. Contact centers should align their agents according to specialty, and direct any incoming requests to the proper specialty group, to deliver more efficient service. This process of managing the agents, typically referred to as reskilling, ensures that agents are always available to meet the calls as they arrive. The process can help drive all kinds of KPIs like transfer rates and customer and agent satisfaction. Tools like the Aceyus Assignment Manager (AAM) can help contact centers quickly optimize and maintain their skill group assignments.

Now take this a step further using IVR systems. An intelligent and intuitive IVR is often the first point of customer interaction with the contact center. Customer account info, along with choices made within the IVR, can quickly determine the appropriate specialty group, greatly reducing hold times and transfers. This can also promote personalization in the contact center if the IVR can effectively route customers to the agents with whom they typically interact. The customers would be more confident in the service process, and the agents would be self-assured and authoritative in resolving issues.

Timing is everything

Fast Service is a goal to which all brands aspire (and will spend money to achieve), understanding that consumers want their resolutions to come sooner rather than later. In fact, 63% of consumers say that quick issue resolution or issue resolution on the first contact is essential to a satisfactory experience. How long is too long, even if it’s the first interaction?

  • Microsoft reported that 43% of American consumers are willing to wait on hold for 1-5 minutes, with just 39% willing to wait 5-10 minutes.
  • 1 out of every 3 consumers will hang up and never call back after waiting for more than 10 minutes.
  • For online support, 42% of customers expect a response to all complaints and questions within 60 minutes – a window that will only get smaller and smaller.

Built-in analytics can help anticipate times of high contact volume so agents can be scaled to properly manage wait times and accurate routing.

Meet your customers where they are

Customers demand accessibility and efficiency on all channels that are continuously changing and evolving. One significant trend with younger consumers is the use of social media as a preferred channel for customer service. Microsofts recent State of Global Customer Service report shows that 64% of millennials believe that social channels are sufficient for their support needs. As a result, many brands are allotting much of their resources and best agents to social media platforms to keep these valuable customers.

Increasing social media capabilities is a solid long-term investment, but not at the expense of other channels. For example, consumers in the 25-54-year age group are much more likely than others to use email as their primary service channel. And the phone is the more popular choice among older age groups eighty-seven percent of consumers that are 55-70 years, compared to less than twelve percent of those under the age of twenty-five. Another interesting insight from Marketing Sherpa: Satisfied customers are more likely than unsatisfied customers to engage with a brand on every channel, and in general, they trust traditional channels more than digital ones. (This is more evidence that traditional channels, like print, are not going away anytime soon!)

Small priority changes can lead to big innovation

Contact centers benefit from technological advances but are also penalized when they fail to keep up. A 2016 Consero Group study found that the primary goal of contact center managers is to improve the customer experience, but of those managers, only one in three believe they have adequate resources to deliver on that goal. Nearly half of those surveyed point to infrastructure as the biggest obstacle, with 78% claiming that their contact center’s tools are outdated and insufficient. It’s clear to most that innovation is not a one-time expense but a constant endeavor. A few priority changes can point contact centers in the right direction of where innovation is needed most.

Unfortunately, many contact center managers aren’t intentional with their reporting. They often spend so much time running reports that they have no time to dig into what the reports are telling them. Eliminating any unnecessary metrics and reports can free up valuable time so managers can focus on the results. This can help prioritize efforts in daily operations and in the budget. If a platform change is on the horizon, switching to omni-channel reporting can isolate areas for improvement and drive innovation priorities, because its extremely effective at indicating channels that are in demand, as well as the unique role each service channel plays in the overall customer experience.

While some metrics are unnecessary and should be eliminated, others promote transparency and should be added to the reporting mix e.g., experiential metrics. Many contact centers say they want to promote customer satisfaction in the service experience, yet they incentivize agents based on transactional metrics like Average Handle Time. Transactional metrics are helpful in monitoring efficiency, but they don’t tell the whole story of how the interaction made the customer feel i.e. customer satisfaction. Both types of metrics should share real estate on reports and dashboards. Over time, this should drive a shift in mindset and priority, reflected in changes to agent incentive programs, etc. But doing so involves partnering with the right innovators who can offer effective solutions that give your contact center and agents the latest in technology and thought-leadership. Aceyus is proud to give enterprise-level contact centers the tools to help them succeed and grow in a changing marketplace.


If your contact center is not meeting customer expectations, experts at Aceyus are passionate about bringing success to your business and consumers.

Aceyus Team

Aceyus Team

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