Contact center insights: The gold mine you didn’t know you had

Learn how retailers can leverage contact center insights to get to the heart of the customer and provide better experiences.

“Thanks for calling! Please listen carefully as our menu options have recently changed. For customer service, press 1. For returns, press 2. For information on your delivery, press 3. For all other inquiries, press 4. To speak to a representative, press 0.”

“BEEP.”

“Our representatives are currently assisting other customers, please hold.”

*CUE HOLD MUSIC*

Ah, yes. Phoning the contact center of a retailer. Often irritating for the customer. Often a missed opportunity for the retailer. Here’s the deal: anyone who engages with a customer has power. Power to drive revenue, build customer loyalty and inform organizational change. Too often, that power is squandered.

The experience consists of the customer looking to have a simple question answered: “Where’s my order?” for example. A maze of menu options is presented and a higher than normal call volume extends the time on the phone. Eventually, the question is met with an answer and the interaction ends. This can also be replicated through online chat.

Sometimes, a customer is asked to fill out a survey to provide feedback about their interaction. Usually, it’s up to the customer to choose from five different faces or a thumbs up/down/sideways and the retailer counts that as meaningful insight.

The experience is commonplace. Customers have taken notice. 43% of customers agree that retailers are NOT committed to delivering the best possible customer service. On top of that, 68% of customers say that a single poor retail CX experience will negatively impact their brand loyalty. Research also finds that the ability to resolve customer service issues on first contact is the #1 driver of consumer loyalty.

So, it might make sense to improve the contact experience. First, we must look at how contact centers are viewed by companies today:

1. A source of answers to frequently asked questions.
2. An expense.

Which is a dull point of view. And that leads to a dull experience.

If we want to change the outcomes from the contact center, we have to ditch the original perspective. Contact centers are THE most underrated source of valuable customer feedback for any retailer. Specifically, the contact center is a rich source of customer data, sentiment and emotion.

In fact, 80% of enterprise data is unstructured. Contact centers are in a unique position to harness that data and turn it into insights more cheaply than other departments. Interaction data is like ‘free’ data for contact centers. Contact centers can use interaction data as a means to gather raw thoughts from customers, which could reveal their unmet needs and consequently become an inspiration for innovation.

From contact center data, you can determine:

• Top reasons for why customers are reaching out.
• Why customers are returning an item (talk to them about it instead of choosing a reason from a dropdown menu).
• What products people are hunting for (and should stock up on).
• And a ton more.

These insights can be fed back to teams like product creation, merchandising and marketing to inform decision-making. Back in the day, walking the shop floor was the only way to capture this type of information—but this isn’t the most ideal today since shopping habits have evolved beyond just visiting the physical store.

We propose that the view of the contact center should evolve into something like this:

More dynamic. Interconnected between teams. Arrows illustrate information flow throughout the organization. CX leaders agree that this is a good idea: 81% of them cite more business intelligence to share with the broader company as an “important” or “very important” factor for success.

Transforming the traditional contact center into an insights hub will change the way you look at merchandising, planning and product creation.

Let’s show you how.