Future of the Contact Centre Conference On-Demand

Mastercard is new to the contact centre world as they have historically outsourced their cardholder programme services to 37 locations around the world. Just before the global pandemic impacted the world, Mastercard set up its first 24/7 consumer contact centre out of their technology hub. Renzo will be looking at the profound impact the pandemic has had and look to the future as the organisation anticipates a surge in demand with customers resuming travelling as vaccines kick in.

loveholidays, one of the UK’s fastest growing online travel agencies, experienced monumental upheaval when the pandemic hit. They were forced to refocus their customer service strategy quickly, whilst managing a record number of queries.

Hear from loveholidays as they share how customising their on-premise contact centre solution to a cloud-based platform allowed a smooth transition to remote working and improved agent productivity by 20%. We will discuss the agile approaches that removed the need for heavy infrastructure and implementation and share what the future holds for contact centre technology.

The trusty phone line has been tested this year. With the rise in customer support requests, companies traditionally using telephone lines as their primary customer support channels are looking to add modern ways of communicating with customers.

The pandemic outcomes included agents working remotely and the rapid need to handle a lot of interactions with fewer resources. Phone calls are expensive, and customers get annoyed and are left frustrated with being put on hold for long periods of time. How can customer service organisations meet that demand while keeping costs reasonable?

This virtual session looks at those specific customer expectations to determine how best to meet or even exceed them under current circumstances. The discussion touches on the need to empower agents to deliver exceptional customer service that results in a satisfactory experience for both parties. Finally, contact centre experts will discuss the technology available to facilitate these encounters, where the sweet spot between enablement and total cost of ownership lies, and how customer service organisations must put strategic adoption of technology at the centre of their operational roadmap in the new era.

Join RingCentral for a virtual discussion on how businesses are reassessing their approach to customer communications and the role of technology in the modern contact centre.

My presentation will focus on what I believe is the right operating model for Customer Care over the next 2-3 years. Mixing automation with AI and great people. Creating multiskilled teams for first contact resolution and investing in an agile model of homeworking and great spaces for collaboration. I will use examples we have delivered and are delivering here at the very group which have had huge impact on brand NPS, call and complaint reduction, customer outcomes and employee engagement.

Call centres have been around for almost 60 years. Despite their rebrand to “contact centres,” operations haven’t changed much, and contact volume is still overwhelmingly phone-based. And, with the pandemic, the need to transform contact centres to a digital-first operation has become more urgent than ever before. So how are businesses planning this fundamental shift? What do contact centres look like when they’re digitally transformed?

Join Aviva’s Global Head of Mobile, Chris Thompson, as he shares how the pandemic has generated the need for more digital capabilities to fulfill customer demands, and how Aviva is supporting customers with in-app messaging and deflecting calls away from the contact centre. And much more!

But it was also a year for adaptation and agility, to keep up with changing customer needs and making sure internal teams could be successful even when working remotely. In fact, our latest CX Trends 2021 research shows that, more than anything else, being able to make changes or adapt quickly and easily is the top priority for CX teams heading into the new year.

Hear from Andy Eadle, Director of Customer Service at Shell Energy as he shares valuable insight and learnings from setting up remote support teams overnight and continuing to work effectively and efficiently in this new remote working world.

What you will learn:
– Remote working 101 – the move to WFH, onboarding agents, enabling teams
– Maintaining and monitoring remote team productivity, effectiveness and keeping morale high
– Improving cross-functional collaboration
– Investing and optimising in technology

We plan to update on the HomeServe strategy, the experience we’ve been through over the last 12 months, the impact that Covid has had on our operating model and how it’s influenced our thinking and the plans we have for the future; focused on automation and our Contact Centre transformation.

With a large network of globally distributed outsourced agents, Microsoft needs to take extra care to keep everyone aligned, updated, and engaged, so that they can be trusted advisors creating consistent experiences for all customers. This became especially difficult with COVID 19 and the transition to work from home. During this session we will share how Microsoft Stores Consumer Support team established a direct line of communications with its advocates, keeping them not only informed, aligned, and resilient, but also connected to each other and to the Microsoft brand at an emotional level. All ensuring clients receive a seamless experience, always.

James and Maria will examine how conversational AI is Transforming the customer journey at Sainsbury’s with a focus on the role of voice assistants in making shopping at Sainsbury’s easy while at the same time highlighting how focussing on customer effort is still the key to delivering on a great CX.

It’s no secret the contact centre is forever changed. Moving to a cloud contact centre can prove valuable with virtually limitless resources; fast, cost-effective scalability to accommodate seasonal changes and sustained growth; and access to new or more robust technology. A modern workforce also understands the shifting needs of customers as we come out of this pandemic. Modern contact centre leaders know that an engaged workforce is more suited to tackling these new challenges, and keeping remote agents engaged involves providing tools that directly relate to their own performance.

Join Charlie Snedden of Calabrio to learn more about tangible tactics – including enabling scheduling flexibility and easy dashboard development and access – that can keep your agents engaged and the evolving needs of customers met.

With a company purpose of “Making Every Experience Extraordinary’ and a timeline that dramatically changed due to the pandemic and customer behaviours, we are very proud of our end-to-end business transformation that delivered both a deep cultural change and a customer service team fit for the future.

Our vision had three objectives:
• Have a Rockstar team who were empowered, loved us, and had an awesome toolkit.
• To be there when our customers needed us, in the right channel, with the correct info.
• Use technology to support us in ensuring seamless journeys and to maximize efficiency.

At HSBC UK, we help customers get the outcome they’re looking for. Our focus has been on blending technology that enables effortless, quick and convenient customer contact, with the power of our people, to deliver a personalised service.

In a world in were customers have come to expect ‘on demand’ service, how they interact with us has evolved and customers are increasingly turning to digital channels for support. Underpinned by the ongoing adoption of technology in our lives – which has been accelerated by the global pandemic – the speed of delivery is also a critical factor in delivering great service.

At HSBC UK, we study customer conversations on our chat channels and identifying the common types of queries that chatbots could help with. This enables us to create the chatbots and design the ‘journey’ to get our customers to the correct outcomes. In designing our bots, we aim to personalise them so customers don’t feel they’re talking to a robot. Using bots to help with basic queries gives our contact centre agents time to deal with more serious and complex issues.

This presentation will explore how we are utilising the knowledge and passion of our frontline customer agents to build chatbots, reacting to the major events that drive never before seen demand, which has led to significant growth in customer chat interactions and presented new career opportunities for our people, which we believe is the future of Contact Centres.

Claire discussed how Co-op service delivery was transformed to meet the distinct needs of their customers; and how it moved towards a single entry point and multi-skilled one-stop shop for all Co-op queries, addressing the homeworking gap to support employees.

Hear from Twilio Foundry’s Sam Richardson on the top 9 trends they’re hearing and seeing from customers – from established enterprises to innovative.

BrewDog is the UK’s best selling Craft Brewery that is a recognised leader in all things innovation and creativity, whether that’s the craft beers loved across the UK, or the customer service and care provided by its team of dynamic support agents. In this session, you’ll hear from Emma DeSena, Head of CX at BrewDog and Simon Johnson, General Manager at Freshworks UK. Together, Emma and Simon will discuss how despite a year of change, with record numbers of enquiries, the closure of bars and the boom in eCommerce, BrewDog keeps it’s community of equity punks informed and engaged.

You’ll also hear how BrewDog has been able to deliver a great experience for members of the support team as well as the customer, with a little help from its cloud-based, SaaS customer support partner Freshworks. Through BrewDog’s innovative approach, BrewDog has boosted CSAT by 10%, despite experiencing more than a 100% increase in the number of customer enquiries since March 2020.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already won its place in the hot topics around technology and in the contact centre space. According to Forbes, the market for call-centre AI technology is expected to increase from $800 million in 2019 to $2.8 billion by 2024.
However, there is still much confusion about how AI can help contact centres do a better job at assisting agents to be better and more productive while making customers happier.
In this session, we will:
• Lift the curtain on what is AI
• Look at where AI is helping contact centres
• See how state-of-the-art AI technology enables contact centres to reach new heights of productivity and customer experience delivery

As companies grapple with technological innovation and the adoption of AI technologies to streamline processes and procedures, it can be daunting to grapple with unknowns and justify the investment required in hi-tech, automotive solutions. Learn how Robotic Process Automaton (RPA) can be used as a springboard for success and an entry point into the AI space.

Kate will focus on the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the contact centre at Biffa, how we operated the centre, the impact on our people and our customers and her personal story around coming into the role in the middle of the pandemic.

Given the events of the past year there has been a tectonic shift in the call centre space. Hard to know what is temporary versus permanent. There are implications from operating expenses to customer experience, personnel and culture that will see an impact.