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: 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: Placing a Right Person in the Right Place to Optimization Workforce

September 24, 2021 – In this Leaders Talk, the Contact Center Associations of Asia Pacific (CC-APAC) discussed “Workforce Optimization in Contact Center.” We invited three speakers who are professionals in the Asia Pacific contact center industry. 

One of the speakers is Mark Harington, Vice President Solutions, APAC at NICE Ltd. Mark said that the industry has now come to a better. He said that we need to engaged workforce. Because today’s workforce they don’t do receptionist anymore because they answer the questions so hard. Compare it to chatbots and any other websites that can’t answer some of the questions, the receptionist is still better. And that is why you need to keep them more engaged in work and make their life easier, faster, better, and engaged.

About workforce optimization strategy in contact center, Mark shared his perspective. He calls that strategy a thick layer on the boiled egg. The thick layers are what our company decides on how to talk to our customers. Every company decides differently because some companies want to keep their customers happy and want their customers to love them. Some companies just don’t care about their customers and do the basic stuff only.

Mark also shared a summary of today’s discussion. He said that the way to deal with the shifts and markets, as the old man said that make sure you have the right person in the right places. Customers have to meet the right people who can answer their questions. Make sure you are there to answer what they need to answer. And if you can get to them before they even come to you, then that is great. That is the simplest way to organize your workforce.

He said that you can choose another option. You can go through technology, but you have to think about which vendor has the right experience in your domain. Who can understands your organization much better, what is the amount of changes management you change to adapt the staff.  Then, all of these things are what allow you to have the right development. Spend more time asking about change management, what will happen in three months or six months, how have you done this before, what are the challenges in getting technology to another technology. (ANF)