Turning the contact center into a catalyst for change

A growing number of organizations in the public and private sectors are tapping their contact centers for data-based insights about their customers, agents and organizations. However, this strategic shift comes with its own challenges, from the scale of the change itself to what customers think about AI.

For one public sector organization in London, the contact center has become a force for organizational change. Through the use of AI-powered speech analytics, the London borough of Barking and Dagenham is now leveraging data gathered from more than 300,000 annual calls to engage those who are less likely to respond to VoC, while closing the loop on customer service.

During All Access: Future Contact Centers 2024, Sabina Onwuka, CX mentor and coach and head of customer services for Barking and Dagenham Council, will explain how she drove change across three contact centers and share practical strategies for making any contact center a catalyst for organizational change.  

In this interview, she tells CX Network about implementing AI-powered analytics and maintaining customer trust.

CX Network: During All Access: Future Contact Centers 2024, you’re speaking about how the contact center can drive organizational change. What are some of the key points your session covers?

Sabina Onwuka: Contact centers are the hubs that generate data and insights that help drive change in organizations. Gone are the days when organizations drive change without the input of the customer. If that happens, they lose business, and the customer goes elsewhere.

Customer expectations have risen since the Covid-19 pandemic, and people now expect more; they are more aware of their rights, they want alignment with their values and beliefs, and many have faced their own economic changes.

As these trends converge, the insights extracted from the contact center can indicate how to deliver better customer experiences and drive higher satisfaction as well as the retention of loyal customers. Extracting and utilizing these insights can also drive agent satisfaction, as they are listened to and seen as more than people answering a phone call. The conversations that are conducted through the contact center are becoming more complex and sensitive, and we need to respond by training our staff to have more informed conversations.

We also need to revisit how we measure whether our advisors are doing a good job. For example, are metrics such as average handle time (AHT) a thing of the past? Should MI and the quality of the call be the primary measure?

CX Network: The benefits of tapping contact center insights are clear, but utilizing them is not always easy. What are your tips for how a practitioner can drive organizational change through their contact center?

Sabina Onwuka: CX practitioners must be honest to gain the trust of the employees. Transparency is key here. I advise that you over communicate well before the change and get the contact center involved at an early stage; you will be surprised by the information it holds. Benchmarking is always important, but you should let teams know who you are benchmarking against, so they understand the why behind the resulting decisions.

Encouraging cross functional collaboration helps to review processes and bring in new ideas and innovation. There are always some teams for whom siloed working is the best option, but there will be some that can gain from collaboration and by merging new processes into the contact center, you can streamline resourcing and budgets.

Setting and measuring KPIs is important, however, the data the contact center is generating should drive the KPI setting.

We know AI is the big buzz word in the industry right now, but before you implement AI make sure you understand the “why”. AI should not be a disruptor that will have a negative impact and alienate staff. It should be an enhancer to work alongside your workforce and then you will see the benefit and secure the necessary buy-in.

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CX Network: When we conducted our research into the Global State of CX earlier this year, 43 percent of respondents from around the world said one of the top three customer behavior trends this year, is the customer’s awareness of how AI uses their data. What is your advice for how public sector organizations that do use AI-powered analytics and services can gain (and maintain) the trust of local residents?

Sabina Onwuka: For those not yet using AI, understand the why behind the need to implement it.

Think about the areas of your organization that can work smarter and not harder to serve your customers. Then reach out to your internal and external stakeholders to discuss it further alongside data and insights.

For those already using AI, at Barking and Dagenham our residents expect a good service each time they contact us. So, explain to residents how AI technologies are being used, what data is collected, and how it benefits them by delivering a better service experience in the moment and over time.

Ongoing training for staff is equally important as well as making sure the technology continues to be fit for purpose. There is nothing more detrimental to the trust of your residents than implementing a bad bot!

Also, make sure you have something in your governance policy that outlines the roles, responsibilities, and processes for AI use in the organization.

Finally, always manage your residents’ expectations as human intervention will never go away, and so we want to maintain our level of service regardless of what channel a customer uses to contact us.

Click here and register to watch Sabine’s session, Unlocking insights: How contact centers drive organizational change