RETHINK Retail’s Solution Spotlight shines a light on industry vendors and what makes them distinct.
This vendor spotlight is on Talkdesk, a global customer experience leader for customer-obsessed companies.
Its contact center solution provides a better way for businesses and customers to engage with one another. The speed of innovation and global footprint reflect the companies commitment to ensure businesses everywhere can deliver better customer experiences through any channel, resulting in higher customer satisfaction, cost savings and profitability.
To learn more about Talkdesk visit: https://www.talkdesk.com
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Shannon Flanagan:
Hi, I’m Shannon Flanagan. I’m the Vice President of Global Industry Strategy for Retail and Consumer Goods at Talkdesk. We are a global contact center leader for customer obsessed companies in 95 countries across all industries, enabling them to intelligently unlock the promise and potential of great customer experience.
Today, I’m going to talk about the challenges and opportunities facing retailers and how Talkdesk helps retailers meet those challenges and opportunities. So in short, the biggest challenges and opportunities I think is the phrase, a couple of them, is “keeping up with the Joneses,” as overused as it may be. And this other phrase that makes the back of my hair stand on edge, “if the shoe fits,” customer expectations are increasingly more demanding. We are far less forgiving, and we now have the platform to make or break a brand in ways we never could before. Retailers don’t make the rules anymore, we as customers do.
Given that there’s so many opportunities and challenges, I’m going to focus on the one you nearest and dearest to my heart and that of Talkdesk; providing stellar service. And back in the good old days, this was at the heart of any self-respecting retailer. Then somewhere along the line, profits and consequently cost became more important, and this has a direct impact to service.
Even before the pandemic and the great resignation, how hard was it defined in associate in most stores, or get someone knowledgeable on the phone? I’ve always joked, but it’s true, the store labor budget is the ATM of the PNL.
Reality is, people choose where they shop because of how it makes them feel. That could be because someone knows their name, their taste. It’s because of the thrill of the hunt, or how easy it is to make a purchase. Think Amazon. Makes me feel good getting through my to-do list. It also means, do you care about helping them, fixing what’s wrong, and treating them like a human being?
This is what agents are tasked with addressing every minute in a contact center. How often does someone contact a retailer because they are happy? They call because they are not. In our recent loyalty report of over 2000 consumers, the number one driver for customer loyalty is the ability to resolve an issue on first contact. So, I’m going to walk through some challenges and opportunities and how Talkdesk helps.
Number one, challenge. To be able to resolve an issue on first contact, retailers need real-time, quality, and connected data, and this still feels like a holy grail. The good news is, retailers are finally smart to it now and it was the number one area of investment in our research conducted last fall.
The opportunity coming from that is that they need to equip their agents to view not just the real-time connected data in a single pane of glass, but also understand the sentiment of their customers and issues that are trending, and this is all enabled by AI.
Another challenge. Current contact center KPIs focus on speed and not quality. The reality is good may look like 30 minutes or 30 seconds, depending on the use case. So, the opportunity is reimagine the role of your agents as brand ambassadors, and the KPIs that not only consider efficiency, but also the customer’s experience and how seller service is the fastest way to build loyalty, which is the most productive path to revenue growth.
Another challenge is enough investment in contact center technologies to unlock self-service, deliver seamless and personalized experiences across all of the other emerging shopping and communication platform; all to create the conditions for agents to do a job they are proud of, and this of course results in happier customers.
So, the opportunity to, put it bluntly? Retailers, put your money where your mouth is. 89% of CX professionals believe the contact center is a critical part of their CX strategy and journey. Said another way, you are in the business of making customers happy, invest accordingly.
In closing, what you don’t see when you deliver sloppy service are the future sales you’ve lost. And if you don’t think about it and measure customer lifetime value, you aren’t looking at what stellar service gives you in future and radiated sales. Put simply, it’s a misnomer that giving a great customer experience is expensive.