It's no secret that companies across industries are focused on the customer experience to grow customers, increase loyalty and drive revenues. In today's complex world of constantly changing products and services, where customers have more choices than ever, it's especially important to deliver a superior customer experience consistently, with every interaction.
The contact center is the most common point of contact - still - despite all the other channels available. That puts the customer service representative (CSR), or agent, at the center of customer interactions.
The role that CSRs play in shaping and influencing the customer experience cannot be underestimated. It's essential that they be empowered with all the tools and training necessary to handle every interaction the right way, and in a personalized and efficient manner, each and every time.
CSR efficiency and effectiveness today, however, is challenged by increasingly complex and unpredictable customer interactions. CSRs now navigate more applications on their desktop than ever before, sometimes having to work across 15-20 different siloed applications - and as many different screens - during the course of just one call. On top of that, the CSRs are told to personalize interactions, make them more relevant for the customer, and cross-sell and up-sell with continually changing information. And perform all this in the least amount of time.
It's as if we've left the CSR and the customer experience at the mercy of chance. Is agent luck a viable approach to ensuring that business objectives are achieved in the contact center‾ Is agent luck an appropriate method of ensuring that CSRs handle interactions effectively and efficiently‾
Clearly, we need a new breed of agent desktop. A smart agent desktop. One that brings together all the information agents need in one place and streamlines their navigation across a multitude of applications. But it's not enough to simply unify the desktop. A smart agent desktop additionally, automatically, delivers critical, in-context guidance to agents, when necessary, as they move field by field across multiple, different applications. A smart agent desktop helps agents know, understand and fully deliver on customer expectations during each interaction in a time-efficient manner - while at the same time delivering on the company's overall business objectives.
Let's face it - we need intelligence at the desktop.