2 out of every 3 firms surveyed still cannot orchestrate customer journeys across multiple channels, according to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting. And 7 out of 10 survey participants said that agents do not have all the relevant customer information and interaction history at the moment of engagement—resulting in frustrating experiences for both customers and agents.

Watch this on-demand webinar to hear industry experts discuss:

How CX is being negatively impacted by a handful of operational challenges within the contact center

• Why firms that invest in improving the agent experience will win the CX battle
• The roadmap to achieving a frictionless and unified customer journey
• Ways to ensure strong ROI on contact center technology investments.

 Watch Webinar

Highlights from the Webinar

During this webinar, our guest speaker Art Schoeller, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester, shared some great insights from a study that Forrester Consulting conducted across multiple industries, including Financial Services, Healthcare, Insurance, and Telecommunications.¹

Continue reading to learn more about the contact center challenges that are getting in the way of improved CX.

Subpar Agent Experiences

In this webinar, our panelists discuss the importance of agent experience in delivering differentiated customer service. According to a Forrester survey, the top priorities for design teams fall under journey mapping, design and UX research, and UX and design strategy.² However, these areas can be difficult to optimize when they lack the data needed to guide these strategic decisions.

“People want customer service reps who can answer their questions. All of them. They can resolve customer questions quickly. They don’t have to go check with someone, so we can ring the first contact resolution bell and make sure that we’re one and done. These are the three key drivers. So, are we set up in such a way that our contact centers, the data system supporting them, the system supporting the agent experience as well, enable all of those?”

– Art Schoeller, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester

Integration Challenges

The main reason contact centers lack access to data is due to integration challenges. Here’s what our guest speaker, Art Schoeller, had to say about the matter.

“Some of them [integration challenges] come from the fact that these are disparate systems. It’s a multi-cloud type of solution, or it might be one of those systems that is still on-premises. We’ve got data that needs to be mashed together between the two of them. But I need the CRM data and I need the contact center operational data that tells me about agents’ and operations’ performance, and more of that customer data that typically is over in the CRM system. That’s how we really do our job more effectively — when we pull those together. And if it’s hard to join that data, it makes for a problem.”

– Art Schoeller, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester

Poor Agent Desktop UX

Another factor that creates friction throughout the customer journey is a poor agent desktop experience. During a typical customer interaction, agents often need to navigate between multiple apps to get the information they need.

“It’s a challenge. And I was actually kind of surprised by these research results because when we asked people, well, how many apps do you have on the agent desktop? I’ve heard more than 10, which only came in at 5% here. All right. But we saw people that have seven to ten or four to six different applications, and I get it. Everyone’s trying to put another thing out there to help the agent and it’s not. So, it’s just adding to the confusion. So, at the end of the day, this idea of crafting a great agent experience, so much of it pivots around having a great agent desktop.”

– Art Schoeller, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester

Want to find out how to overcome these contact center challenges? Watch the on-demand webinar now.

Sources:

¹ Transform The Agent And Customer Experience Using Contact Center Solutions With Embedded CRM Capabilities, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of LiveVox, March 2021 

² Forrester’s Q3 2019 Global State of Design Teams Survey