As companies quickly made the shift to work-from-home settings, the contact center was forced into a new realm. With in-store experiences all but disappearing, in many cases contact center agents found themselves providing the entirety of the customer experience.

This meant not only were contact center agents called upon to answer the standard questions about billing, delivery timelines, and product availability, but to provide in-depth and broader information in general. On any given day, they may be expected to provide detailed assembly instructions for assembling a home-office desk system, or to adjust to a new curbside delivery service that was introduced that morning, to name a few.

The changes in the contact center are evidence of abruptly-shifting tides in the market. People went from using their home as a place to drop by between hobbies, relax, and sleep to using their home as a workspace. In March 2020, the home became a Hotel California that required comfort, efficiency, and entertainment because there was no checkout date in sight.

All of this impacted contact centers as work-from-home plans pushed the workforce to quickly create a home office that spurred productivity as well as gathering rooms that felt cozy and safe for the long haul.

If your contact center still has the feel of rushing to catch up to these trends, there are a few considerations you may want to include in your strategy:

Embrace Digital: If you haven’t invested in a cloud-based solution for your contact center, now is the perfect time. Companies that were already utilizing a cloud solution were able to seamlessly adjust to work-from-home orders because their employees were already equipped to do their work anytime, anywhere.

Cloud-based digital transformation allows you to reduce costs, improve productivity, and reduce the pressure on your IT team with a managed solution.

Prioritize Agility: When the customer experience relies so heavily on the contact center, you need to be able to make changes that reflect your most recent business objectives. You want to prioritize performance and customer satisfaction, which both rest on the agility of your processes.

Agility is not just a valuable approach to the current situation. It also enables your contact center to be ready for a variety of scenarios in the future.

Implement Automation: A cloud-based solution equips your contact center with the technology necessary to automate your most routine interactions with customers. Not only is it more cost-effective, but it also empowers your agents to handle more complex customer issues. Agent turnover will decrease because you have turned the more mundane tasks over to an automated agent and allowed your agents to focus on more fulfilling work.At Access Tech, we are perfectly positioned to equip your contact center for the new demands of the work-from-home environment. Contact us to discuss the right solution for your organization.