Imagine that one of your customers is experiencing a problem with a product or service they have purchased from your company. Wanting to find a quick and easy solution to their problem, they land on your site, but after searching your FAQ and interacting with your chatbot, they realize they won’t be able to find the answer to their problem. It’s a bit too complicated.
They then decide to call your contact center for help. Once they contact an agent and explain their problem, the agent quickly realizes that the customer’s problem is quite complex and not something they will be able to help with themselves. They will need the help of one of their colleagues in the back office. However, instead of asking them to call another team or put them in another queue, they remember that they helped a customer with a similar problem last week and, in particular, how one of their colleagues on the back office team was very helpful. .
Asking the customer to put up with them for a while, the agent checks their system to see if that colleague is available and quickly texts them to see if they can help. Their co-worker quickly replies that they can help, and the agent moves on to the conversation with their co-worker. By introducing his colleague to the customer and explaining the situation, the agent then takes a back seat to the conversation while his colleague assists the customer. This takes a few minutes, so while they wait for the problem to be resolved, the agent catches up on some administrative work and answers a few emails from other customers.
Once the customer’s problem is resolved, the agent rejoins the conversation, thanks the colleague for being able to help, and concludes the interaction by asking the customer if there’s anything else they can help them with today. The customer replies that there is nothing else and thanks the agent and their colleague for such helpful assistance. Both bid each other a good day. The call ends.
Customer support agent
I recently played this scenario to Barak Eilam, its CEO BEAUTIFULand explained that the kind of connectivity and collaboration described in the script is just that 1CXtheir new product line, is aimed at convenience and is something that many customers have been asking for for a long time.
1CX is ostensibly a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) product addition to its existing platform, but its launch recognizes a few emerging trends in the customer service and experience space, namely:
- Digital, automation and self-service technology will mature and improve in scope and efficiency. This will remove much of the need for agent involvement in the majority of plain and simple inquiries from customers.
- As this happens, the nature of the queries that customer service agents will be asked to handle will increase in complexity. Some of these more complex questions will require access to knowledge, systems and expertise that are often not accessible on the front lines but, more often than not, are in the middle and back offices of large organizations.
Beyond the capabilities of their new product and what it will enable contact centers to do, particularly when dealing with complex customer issues, one of the most interesting things about 1CX is how they’re pricing it. Rather than pricing it as a separate UCaaS-lite offering and charging an additional $25 per seat as is common with some other systems, existing CXOne customers will be charged just $5 per user per month for this set of enhanced collaboration and communication capabilities .
This is a smart move, especially given the budget and investment constraints that many contact centers have to operate, and it is likely to prove popular.
