Moving Forward: What Will 2021 Bring for Contact Centers?

Contact Center Pipeline’s Advisory Board shares solid advice to take into the new year.

Welcome, 2021! The new year always brings hope for new beginnings. Although COVID-19 is still the central focus of our everyday lives, the contact center industry appears to be moving forward with optimism, lessons learned and plans for delivering customer service in a business environment that looks nothing like the previous years.

As Einstein once said, “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.” Certainly, the pandemic forced companies to swiftly change, streamline and innovate customer service operations. There have been many positive outcomes that will no doubt shape a better future for the industry, including a deeper appreciation of frontline agents, a shift in mindset about how and where work gets done, increased visibility for the contact center’s role, and a better understanding among senior leaders of its value to the organization.

Here at Contact Center Pipeline, we are kicking off the new year with the awareness that many contact centers will be facing constant change in the upcoming months and years. Thus, we have brought together some of the top experts in the industry to form our new Advisory Board, which will help guide our content and bring you solid advice on trending topics, new tools and practical pointers in every issue.

What better way to introduce our Advisory Board members than to ask them to share their best advice for moving forward into the new year? Read on for insights on strategic initiatives, useful recommendations and words of inspiration from these experienced contact center, customer experience and customer care veterans.

MIKE AOKI
President, Reflective Keynotes Inc.

As a leader, you are responsible for your people. Focus on the health, wellness and emotional resilience of your team. Delivering a great customer experience also can be emotionally and physically draining, especially during these challenging times. As a contact center leader, invest in your team by encouraging them to use company-provided support services, such as employee wellness programs, financial counseling services and Employee Assistance Programs. Boost your team’s morale through supportive coaching, relationship-building and by celebrating successes together.

SANGEETA BHATNAGAR
Founder, SB Global

My advice for leaders is always focused on people and the human element. It is by creating those meaningful human experiences with our team members and with our customers that will allow leaders to be of a greater impact. With different demands and challenges in the workplace, whether working at home or at the office, your customers and team members will require more servant leadership from you! It will be more important than ever to become an emotionally intelligent leader.

Leaders need to invest time to further develop their own emotional and social intelligence. Leaders will need to reflect on their own habits, blind spots and responses to stress to best serve their teams and customers.

The 21st century leadership skills required are compassion, empathy, authenticity, resilience and a willingness to be vulnerable.

HEATHER BISSELL
Director, Customer CARE, Nordstrom

The best piece of advice that I would share with contact center leaders going into 2021 is to expect the unexpected. Every year, we take surveys that translate into articles and white papers, with titles such as “The Future of Contact Centers” or “Contact Center Trends in 2021.” I think we can all agree after this year that even the best-laid plans don’t always come to be! As we look to the future, we need to pivot our thinking to not just goals that we are looking to accomplish, but also start thinking about how agile our business is if we need to quickly move away from those goals and strategies and set forth in a new direction.

As we are taking these types of things into consideration for our businesses, we also need to look to our customers more than ever to tell us how they want to do business with us. Many times, we focus on how to shift a business model and don’t always think about if it’s what our customers want. Ensuring that our agility extends to how we take and implement feedback from customers will continue to be a critical element in the contact center/customer service world.