Tag: Contact Center

Re-imagined Customer Experience by Doing Proactive Outreach to Your Customers

November 26, 2021 – As we know, before announcing the winner on CC-APAC Awards Ceremony 2021, CC-APAC held the CC-APAC Conference 2021 with the theme CC-APAC invite invited two speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry. 

The second speaker is Endang Rachmawati. She is Webex Customer Experience Specialist, Cisco. Endang said now in the pandemic situation, everybody has to work and interact from home and also do everything online. Therefore, the organization has to make sure that they consider their business process for being engaging with their customer. When customers go into their contact centers, they should make sure that the agent will be able to answer the query fast and accurately. 

Endang shared that customer experience is largely broken. What is the problem that makes it broken? She said that because there’s no proactiveness from the organization. If the company will inform them of any critical issue, such as some suspicious activity on their credit card the customer would appreciate it. Then, the customer doesn’t have to make a call, they would know and understand what happened. 

And another thing that makes the customer experience broken is when the customer wants to communicate with the organization, they should be forced to ask by a call. There’s no other channel that the customer will be able to use because when they call the contact centers, it will take some time before they get the solution. 

Endang said that we understand those problems the majority because the organization only focuses on the contact center view, such as on the purchase and the service. In the real fact, she said that customer journey happens before it gets into the contact centers or even after. Then, with our solutions, we will give you a view of an end-to-end customer journey. 

She explains that we understand that improving the customer experience isn’t gonna be easy but it’s quite complex. Because every organization has a different division, they have different sets of solutions and applications. And also, they have different ways of communicating with their customers. 

Customer Care will talk differently to their customer, sales and marketing will have their tools to talk to the customer, then it’s quite complex in making sure that it is going to be one streamlined communication with the same customer. Therefore, this mess is something that we are trying to solve.

The good news is Endang said she have delivered the future of customer experience with the all-new Webex contact center, which is now available in ASEAN. With Webex contact centers, we are re-imagining customer experience in which we are doing proactive outreach with our customers. 

Endang explains that we would be able to notify them, such as doctor appointments, any suspicious on a customer credit card, any orders delays, any pickup notification, and any online ordering status. Make sure that we are notifying you of anything urgent. Then, these will proactively reach out to your customer.

That would certainly go to reduce the number of calls that the customer needs to make into the contact center when the customer needs it. Endang said that it could be a channel of their choice is not just voice. It could be WhatsApp, Facebook, or even WeChat. We don’t have to make them wait. 

We can pick themselves and when they get into the agent, we are empowering the agent to make sure that the problems are solved. She also explains that agents could solve queries faster and accurately. In the end, our service will give positive sentiment to the customer. 

How do we do this? Endang said that we are doing it with automation that is done in a digital service driven. Then, in this digital service-driven interaction, we are doing a lot of automation that we could do in proactively reaching out to the customer before getting into the contact center when it is necessary. Endang said that we are also empowering the agent to do a cross-sell and upsell proactively to the customer. 

She also said there is another thing if we do that will be engaging the customer with our organization. She said we will be able to major it by providing feedback, asking the customer to fill up the feedback to any touchpoint before, during, and after the contact center. (ANF)

Give Your Customers a Smart Start to Their Journey

November 26, 2021 – Before heading to the summit of the CC-APAC Awards 2021, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) held a CC-APAC Conference with the theme, “Asia Pacific Best Practices and Case Studies of Contact Center Innovation.” We invited two speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry.

One of the speakers is Olivier Georlette, a Managing Director, ASEAN, and Strategic Accounts NICE. One of the speakers is Olivier Georgette, a Managing Director, ASEAN, and Strategic Accounts NICE. Olivier said now people are beginning the journey looking for information on how to self-serve or how to address what they need on the website or the mobile app.

But it can be created many challenges for us. One of them is most of the information that people received is not coming from our official website rather it comes from another competitor that has the same industry. Then, what should we do to make information that people or our customers looking for is coming from our website?

Olivier said the first one is we should utilize knowledge projection. He said that knowledge projection is very important. The knowledge projection can help basically to put what the customer looking for on top of the search. We also can provide content that will help the customer easily resolve their wish.

With the knowledge projection, we help drive our content and start the search for the customer. And also, we can ensure the company optimizes the culture, audience, or web search then, our content that customers looking for can appear first in the google search.

Olivier explains this is a significant improvement that can help because when it is the first touchpoint when people start their journey with Google. That can help them go to our website to get the right information with those digital entry points.

Then, Olivier said the second point is the predictive intent. Using the traditional service approach start with the journey initiated by the customer, we can understand the customer history, such as where they come from, and also their characteristic. With that, Olivier said we can reach the customer and can predict what they want before they tell us.

The last point is guided conversation. Olivier said that it can be like automation or robotic. He said when people start their initial journey, entry point, and when they go through our company website, sometimes the steps to complete the process can be very confusing.

Therefore, we can guide customers on our website to a successful resolution. “If you have the right guidance on your website or your application, it can help to ensure that the success rate is higher and less friction. Customer will achieve on the website most easily,” explained Olivier.

Olivier said that we also can provide this guidance will pop up some messages. It can make customer life easier, increase sales, and increase subscriptions. Then, these are three key things that can be a smart start in the journey of the customer. Have the customers be able to achieve their wish or achieve a resolution by self-service using these three technologies. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Focus on the Customer Experience, Not the Technology

October 29, 2021 – In this Leaders Talk, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) discussed the “Cloud Contact Center Strategy.” We invited three speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry. 

One of the speakers is Hunady Budihartono, Country Manager, Genesys. Hunady shared his opinion about the cloud from the operational side. He said that COVID becomes uncertain. When the change going to happen, everybody was working from home and suddenly we have to put more agents at home. Then, that kind of uncertainty becomes the challenge.

Because of that change, now people also don’t want to be face-to-face. They want to make sure that 65% of them can work online. Therefore, that situation pushes everybody to go to the cloud. But before that, we have to think about what kind of cloud we want to do. Then, there is one direction to go and COVID just accelerated the adoption of the cloud.

Also, Hunady has already mentioned before the benefit of the cloud is flexibility. Flexibility is become the key compared to on-premises uncertainty. It means that when we want to add on our capacity, we must be ready right away at the center. But the other really important thing is time to market. Like when we try to start with a contact center, with all the premises we may need like what, three months four months to be up and running. That’s where he thinks the cloud becomes a key.

Hunady also gives some tips regarding this discussion. Hunady said that the first thing we want to make sure of is embraced the change because the direction is so clear. If we want to go to the cloud, then we can go today, next year, or the next two years depends on your face, but don’t be against it. That’s why we must change our mindset because it’s easy to go into the cloud that is easy to get out of the cloud too. Hunady said that the cloud makes the vendor like us vulnerable way compared to all premises.

Because previously we buy, we cannot change for the next three to five years. Then, we are in the worst position compared to all premises but that’s the direction. Hunady thinks that is for our good means we must focus on service, not focus on technology.

Hunady said that we need to change our mindset and flexibility. We need to focus on the customer experience, don’t focus on the technology, or don’t focus on something else, focus on our customers. Because with the cloud, the rest is taken care of, such as security, capabilities, and scalability. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Add Additional Channel for Better Contact Center

October 29, 2021 – Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) present Leaders Talk discussion with the theme “Cloud Contact Center Strategy.” CC-APAC invited three professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers is Tommy Ng, Vice President, CCAM, Country Director, MT Microtel Technology Sdn. Bhd. Tommy shared their opinion about how a manager can utilize the cloud in the contact center. He said that some people think they are not ready for this technology or it’s too dangerous. They also ask, should they do it or not. But Tommy said that the contact center now has no choice. We have to make sure that the user, staff, or employee are safe. 

It’s one of the key things that we have to consider before thinking anything else about how do we sustain our business because if we don’t, we will lose all our employees. Therefore, in this situation, we have to adapt technology that where we want is our staff to be safe because they can take care of our business and also our clients.

Tommy also said that remote working is convenient. But there are two reasons that we have to consider before doing remote work. The first one is infrastructure. The second one is we have to be able to access anywhere. But there are a lot of considerations from the security department to say to allow everybody from anywhere. Therefore, let cloud providers take care of this security issue.

Tommy shared tips and closing remarks on today’s discussion. He said that the main concern for the new generation is we should nothing to worry about data. Now, customers don’t store our number. “If they want to contact anyone, they will find the number on Google and they will call it,” said Tommy. Don’t be too sentimental because you want to keep that number. Tommy said he has the statistic that after a while, people will forget about the old number. Then, that is not a concern. 

Now better we think of the additional channels that we can add benefits, like embark into AI. Then, that is one of the key things that must go because AI will help a lot besides just on the interaction. It gives you a lot of insights. It is not just helping the customer, but we also can help the agent with this assistant AI. So, the agent experience becomes better. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Does Something Difference to Make a Business Change

October 29, 2021 – Interactive discussion initiated by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC), Leaders Talk: Cloud Contact Center Strategy, which invited three professional speakers in the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers who was invited to this discussion is Vikas Kumar. He is Solution Director for ASEAN & Strategic Accounts, Nice Ltd. In this discussion, Vikas explains that this time we have to learn and also unlearn a lot from the past. Because pandemics and lockdown make people change, they could no longer go out, have a face-to-face meeting, and do things like that.

Therefore, this is making a contact center became a kind of front door or first place to go whenever people needed any help or had a question from the business. Some people who never called up, never written email, or never chatted with the contact center, know they are doing that. 

People who were already comfortable doing face-to-face sales now had to go and build their contact center to be more scalable, easy to access and make their staff can answer many of those questions. He thinks that where the overall scale, speed, and efficiency that the cloud can provide it because now we can build up that speed sense into what the contact center can offer.

Vikas also shared the benefits of using the cloud in the contact center. He said that there are two key areas of benefit. He said that the first one is a machine cloud and the second one is a human cloud. Machine cloud is where we get the benefits of scalability. When we talk about cloud, we have a huge capacity which means we can have a data scale, find more patterns, and find more models. Then, the machining cloud will help us to reduce costs and increase speed.

The second one is the human cloud. He said that the human cloud is involved in the millennial style of working. The human cloud is more flexible, can be accessed from anywhere, can be accessed by any type of device, and mobility.

Vikas Kumar also gives a closing remark and his tips about today’s discussion. He thinks that the first one is we should be open about this. The service providers or vendors with technology providers have to be very open about what they can do and what they cannot do.

The most purpose of doing things differently is that we want to make a change to our business. Then, it can make something that is different.

Sometimes some things will have to change both on the people side. A lot of IT teams have been very comfortable taking care of a particular platform. But on the other side, there is an IT team that understands where the technology is going and they are ready to acknowledge it. Also, they are very open to getting retrained to learn new things.

The last thing is he said that we have to prepare for the pitfalls.  If there are any changes, which is that you want? Put back or keep a plan to be ready. He thinks that when you migrate, make sure that you have the right backups you have the right plan in place. At least in the short term, you will have a fallback option. (ANF)

Leaders Talk CC-APAC: Cloud Contact Center Becoming Strategic in Nowadays Situation

October 29, 2021 – The sixth Leaders Talk organized by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) discussed about Cloud Contact Center Strategy by inviting three professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

This discussion was presented by Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia. The first panelist is Vikas Kumar, Solution Director for ASEAN & Strategic Accounts, Nice Ltd. The second panelist is Tommy Ng, Vice President, CCAM, Country Director, MT Microtel Technology Sdn. Bhd. And the last one is Hunady Budihartono, Country Manager, Genesys.

The first topic of discussion is regarding this current situation (pandemic). In this current situation, cloud technology become strategic for the contact center. Vikas said that this time, we have to learn and also unlearn a lot from the past. Because pandemics and lockdown make people change, they could no longer go out, have a face-to-face meeting, and do things like that.

Therefore, this is making a contact center became a kind of front door or first place to go whenever people needed any help or had a question from the business.  Some people who never called up, never written email, or never chatted with the contact center, know they are doing that. 

People who were already comfortable doing face-to-face sales now had to go and build their contact center to be more scalable, easy to access and make their staff can answer many of those questions. He thinks that where the overall scale, speed, and efficiency that the cloud can provide it because now we can build up that speed sense into what the contact center can offer.

Tommy also shared their opinion about how a manager can utilize the cloud in the contact center.  He said that some people think they are not ready for this technology or it’s too dangerous. They also asking, should they do it or not. But Tommy said that the contact center now has no choice. We have to make sure that the user, staff, or employee are safe.

It’s one of the key things that we have to consider before thinking anything else about how do we sustain our business because if we don’t, we will lose all our employees. Therefore, in this situation, we have to adapt technology that where we want is our staff to be safe because they can take care of our business and also our clients.

Tommy also said that remote working is convenient. But, there are two reasons that we have to consider before doing remote work. The first one is infrastructure. The second one is we have to be able to access anywhere. But there are a lot of considerations from the security department to say to allow everybody from anywhere. Therefore, let cloud providers take care of this security issue.

Different from other speakers, Hunady shared his opinion from the operational side. He said that COVID becomes uncertain. When the change going to happen, everybody was working from home and suddenly we have to put more agents at home. Then, that kind of uncertainty becomes the challenge.

Because of that change, now people also don’t want to be face-to-face. They want to make sure that 65% of them can work online. Therefore, that situation pushes everybody to go to the cloud. But before that, we have to think about what kind of cloud we want to do. Then, there is one direction to go and COVID just accelerated the adoption of the cloud. 

The other discussion is talked about the benefits of using the cloud in the contact center. Vikas said that there are two key areas of benefit. He said that the first one is machine cloud and the second one is human cloud. Machine cloud is where we get the benefits of scalability. When we talk about cloud, we have a huge capacity which means we can have a data scale, find more patterns, and find more models. Then, the machining cloud will help us to reduce costs and increase speed.

The second one is the human cloud. He said that the human cloud is involved in the millennial style of working. The human cloud is more flexible, can be accessed from anywhere, can be accessed by any type of device, and mobility.

Tommy also has the same opinion regarding this topic. One of the biggest benefits, he said “Of course, is scalability.” Tommy also shared one example. Our government agencies closed all the branches. Then, what can they do? Because they are front desk at their branches. Therefore, with the cloud, we can ask 200 staff from all the branches to log into the system and help us to answer the calls. Then, scalability is one of the benefits.

Hunady has already mentioned before, the benefit of the cloud is flexibility. Flexibility is become the key compared to on-premises uncertainty. It means that when we want to add on our capacity, we must be ready right away at the center. But the other really important thing is time to market. Like when we try to start with a contact center, with all the premises we may need like what, three months four months to be up and running. That’s where Hunady thinks the cloud becomes a key.

At the end of the discussion, all panelists give their closing remarks and tips about cloud contact center strategy. Want to know more about their opinion? For details, stay tuned for another article on the CC-APAC website. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Prepare Your Team to be a Great Leaders

October 15, 2021 – Interactive discussion initiated by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC), Leaders Talk: Young Leaders in Contact Center, which invited three professional speakers in the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers, which invited to this discussion is Anne Purba. He is Corporate Secretary Vice President of KAI Commuter Indonesia. The company is engaged in organizing commuter rail transportation services using electric rail train facilities in the areas of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi (Jabodetabek). 

As a young leader, Anne needs to change the method from the traditional to the digital platform. She thinks that human touch and behavior change not about one or two years, but also every minute the technology is changed. 

Anne also agreed about how important communication is. Because make the expectation clear and with good communication, can also make it together even there is young people or old people. Our team can pour it and we make a communication to them and they also make feedback to us. Make your expectation clear and reasonable, make the communication building, and expectation clear. Also, make a winning team and then encourage them to do something and make it together.

At the end of the discussion, Anne gives some tips about how to be a good leader. First, you do not have to delay your past because it makes ease stress and then makes it hassle-free for others. Then, try to do one date every day. Within a year, there must be significant takes and beliefs. Regarding prosperity as a religious people, rest assured that it will not be replaced. 

For young leaders, don’t forget to prepare your team to replace you. As a good cleaner, we want a great leader to replace us. Therefore, we should make room to share our experience and get more feedback to make every single improvement and do our best. “Let’s get do the rest. And don’t forget to pray and call your mom and say thank you because she has warned you and made you a leader now,” said Anne. (MAF)

Leaders Talk: 5 Things that Young Leaders Should Do

October 16, 2021 – Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) present Leaders Talk discussion with the theme ” Young Leaders in Contact Center.” CC-APAC invited three professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

One of the speakers is Dian Ratna Furi. She is the Operation Manager of VADS, Indonesia. Dian said that so many young leaders would be born. They came up and brought new ideas and new perspectives. It is affected to contact center to leave all the traditional methods. Contact centers need to change and fast adapt to the condition.

For all young leaders, Dian said that we need to lead by example which contains the action to inspire. As a leader, she explains that we need to commit to the vision, mission, and even share the passion during coaching when meeting or individually. She also shared the experience when she got a big challenge for developing people who were older than her. She said that good communication is important to do.

Dian also explains that having good communication for dealing with elder people is very necessary. The young generation needs to understand their sensitivity during the works and their sensitivity about what they need when they aim in this organization. On the other hand, she found a millennial who likes to speak faster than action. Like she said before, the leader needs to give them an example containing action that can inspire them.

At the end of the discussion, Dian shared some tips about how to be a good leader. Dian said, “Leadership is not based on your age, not based on your rank, not depends on your job title, not depends on your position.” Then, she said that leadership is a choice, we choose and decide whether we want to throw out the rest of our team. Whether we want to look after them or us you want to give them without any direction.

It is your choice and you decide whether you want to lift the others in your team. She also said that young leaders have so many steps that they can do in their leadership quest like, first their need to walk the top, and then the communication. Also, the engagement, young leaders should have inclusion and sensitivity, integrity, and trust here. (ANF)

Leaders Talk: Be a Good Young Leaders by Learning New Things Everyday

October 15, 2021 – Interactive discussion initiated by Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC), Leaders Talk: Young Leaders in Contact Center, which invited three professional speakers in the Asia Pacific contact center. 

One of the speakers who is invited to this discussion is Somruedee Songsoengrit. She is the Distribution Manager in Roojai, Thailand. The company is engaged in insurance. Somruedee said that the young leader’s generation is changing very fast. That becomes a challenge for her to follow them. The impact is a consistently changing environment. It means one situation maybe work one way, but on the other hand, maybe can bring another huge problem. Then, Somruedee said, “And how do we do that? How do I develop my capabilities?”

She also said that to lead the contact center you will have to prepare yourself for that change. You must be ready, be positive, and also dealing with change, whatever it comes, and then we will use our skill set for any experience that we have learned from the past and apply it.  And to develop skills, Somruedee does from learning and practicing. She said that when she is learning, she is knowing, and then do coaching, especially when she led a contact center team.

Somruedee said to manage and communicate with older teams or generations, we should make a relationship with them. We should talk to them to understand them more because we need to spend time with this kind of generation more than the young leaders and the young generation. We should learn together and then, if we understand them for sure, we can work together with them. Team bonding is important. 

Somruedee also shares tips about how to be a good leader for the young leader, especially women, millennials, and the older generation. She said that every day we have learned new things from day-to-day routine. That those lessons we have learned in the day-to-day operations. Even if we are not at work, or our house, or outside the work, it can be helpful to enhance our development skills, especially communication which is very important nowadays. Then, do not stop learning. (ANF)

Leaders Talk CC-APAC: How To Be a Good Young Leaders in Contact Center

October 15, 2021 – In this Leaders Talk, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) discussed “Young Leaders in Contact Center” by inviting three professional speakers to the Asia Pacific contact center.

This discussion was presented by Andi Anugrah, Chairman of ICCA Indonesia. The first panelist is Somruedee Songsaengrit, Distribution Manager, Roojai, Thailand. The second is Dian Ratna Furi, Operations Manager, VADS Indonesia. Then, the last one is Anne Purba, Corporate Secretary Vice President KAI Commuter, Indonesia.

Andi Anugrah as Chairman of ICCA Indonesia has led the discussion. The discussion started about the workstyle of young leaders can impact contact center operation. Somruedee said the impact is a consistently changing environment. It means one situation maybe work one way, but on the other hand, maybe can bring another huge problem.

Dian also said that so many young leaders would be born. They came up and bring new ideas and new perspectives, it is affected to contact center to leave all the traditional methods. Contact centers need to change and fast adapt to the condition.

Another opinion from Anne, she said that she has a work style urgency is efficiency. She needs to change the method from the traditional to the digital platform. She thinks that human touch and behavior change not about one or two years, but also every minute the technology is change.

The next discussion is regarding the capability that young leaders need. According to Somruedee, the young leader needs to get ready, be positive, and deal with a chance whatever is come. She also said that use skills and experience that learn from the past is necessary to apply. And to develop skills, Somruedee does from learning and practicing. She said that when she is learning, she is knowing, and then do coaching, especially when she led a contact center team.

For all young leaders, Dian said that we need to lead by example which contains the action to inspire. As a leader, she explains that we need to commit to the vision, mission, and even sharing the passion during coaching when meeting or individually. She also shared the experience when she got a big challenge for developing people who were older than her. She said that good communication is important to do.

Anne also agreed with Dian about how important communication is. Because make the expectation clear and with good communication, can also make it together even there is young people or old people.

In the middle of the discussion, there is some question from a participant regarding how to deal with the old and the young generation. Somruedee gives the opinion about how to deal with the old generation, she said that it’s a little bit difficult because they are experts in something and sometimes, they have more experience than the young generation. However, understand the older generation is needed and knowing them in person and make a good relationship is helpful.

Dian also explains that having good communication for dealing with elder people is very necessary. The young generation needs to understand their sensitivity during the works and their sensitivity about what they need when they aim in this organization. On the other hand, she found a millennial who likes to speak faster than action. Like she said before, the leader needs to give them an example containing action that can inspire them.

The Leaders Talk event closed with tips from all three speakers about how to be a good leader in the contact center, especially for the young, women, and old generation. Want to know more detail about their opinion? Check the newest article on the CC-APAC website. (ANF)