![\"Goodbye](\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/2020-2021.jpg\")
\nThe COVID-19 health crisis has reshaped the business landscape and the world of work.\u00a0 In contact centres, more employees than ever before now work remotely while customer expectations have risen to their highest levels since Internet connectivity and the smartphone revolution first transformed everything.<\/p>\n
It’s been a difficult year and yet the challenges have made it a game-changer that has caused the industry to innovate at a precipitous rate and there\u2019s no going back,\u00a0\u00a0as 2020 draws to a close and we wave goodbye to a year of unexpected lessons and change, it is the perfect opportunity to take a step back and learn from the past, then move ahead with renewed confidence.<\/p>\n
Lessons learned<\/strong><\/p>\n By far the biggest takeaways from 2020 are:<\/p>\n What\u2019s in store for 2021?<\/strong><\/p>\n With these lessons in mind, next year promises to be a fine balancing act between motivating the workforce while delivering optimal operational processes and even better customer experience (CX).\u00a0 Here are three predictions for 2021:<\/p>\n 1. Agent wellbeing will take centre stage\u00a0<\/strong>– as more contact centres continue homeworking into 2021. Agent skillsets are set to change as frontline staff increasingly need to self-manage and problem solve independently. They will also have to overcome technical challenges and be adept at using cloud collaboration tools to become a new type of SuperAgent. Meanwhile, contact centres will have access to a wider talent pool as commuting or physical disabilities will no longer be a barrier to recruitment in 2021. However, this means increased employer competition for top talent, meaning flexible scheduling and engagement tools will be key to recruiting and retaining the best agents, wherever they are.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 2. Analytics adoption will continue its acceleration <\/strong>\u2013 for agents and for customers. 2020\u2019s move to remote working and less in-person contact has made it clear that knowing rather than guessing or \u2018trusting gut instinct\u2019 will be critical to anticipating employee and customer needs to keep both happy and loyal.\u00a0 The latest analytics tools will become pivotal to gathering the internal and external insights necessary to empower frontline staff and drive competitive advantage – whether through eye opening desktop analytics, employee sentiment analysis and stress predictors or sophisticated Voice of the Customer (VoC) innovations. By using analytics in all shapes and forms to quickly analyse the sentiment of customer interactions, contact centres will finally get the visibility they need to pre-empt and predict customer requirements and raise their own profile within organisations. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 3. Changing customer journeys will keep everyone on their toes\u00a0<\/strong>– as more contact centres use real-time metrics to manage CX as it happens, it will no longer be acceptable to look at old data to make decisions. Surges in e-commerce and speedy adoption of digital services have changed customer behaviour. This move to digital channels is likely to continue for the medium to long term, making it more important than ever for companies to continually re-think how they engage with customers. Meanwhile, the continued reticence of customers to visit in-store will continue to drive demand for online shopping and the sharp increase in order volumes and delivery delays will inevitably cause more queries into contact centres.<\/p>\n Brands will need to prioritise the ability to predict future customer behaviour\u00a0with powerful\u00a0predictive analytics. However, changes in behaviour will not all stick, customers who do not find online shopping a satisfying experience will return to stores at some point. By leveraging valuable intelligence, customer journeys can be re-engineered for optimal CX delivery in a world where everything changes.<\/p>\n What does 2021 have in store for you? For more information on where we are going and what we are thinking, download Calabrio\u2019s latest report\u00a0\u201cEmbracing the evolving world of work\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n Magnus Geverts is VP Product Marketing & Management at\u00a0Calabrio<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n As we say farewell to 2020 there are plenty of positives to take from this year of change and challenges.\u00a0 Magnus Geverts at Calabrio sums up the lessons learned and reveals his top 3 predictions for 2021.\u00a0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23312"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23327,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23312\/revisions\/23327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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![\"Magnus](\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Magnus-Geverts.jpg\")
<\/a>Calabrio is the customer experience intelligence company that empowers organisations to enrich human interactions. The scalability of our cloud platform allows for quick deployment of remote work models\u2014and it gives our customers precise control over both operating costs and customer satisfaction levels. Our AI-driven analytics tools make it easy for contact centres to uncover customer sentiment and share compelling insights with other parts of the organisation. Customers choose Calabrio because we understand their needs and provide a best-in-class experience, from implementation to ongoing support. Find more at\u00a0calabrio.com<\/a>\u00a0and follow\u00a0@Calabrio<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"