The global contact center industry is standing on the cusp of a new era in the customer experience, bringing with it changes to the contact center industry that are unprecedented. The primary drivers behind these expected changes are the preferences, expectations, and demands of the next generation of customers; the Millennials and Generation Z.
The graph below represents the current U.S. population breakdown by generation. As Baby Boomers and, to some extent, Generation X’ers decline as the majority consumer population, Millennials and Gen Z are poised to move into a position of prominence as consumers. The Next Generation of customers will also bring with them a distinctly different set of expectations and requirements when it comes to the customer experience.
This growing generation of consumers brings with them a unique set of attitudes toward various aspects of customer service such as communications, information access, technology support and brand loyalty.
In general terms, secondary research tells us that the next generation of customers will not have the patience of previous generations when it comes to customer service. These customers grew up with information at their fingertips, delivered quickly and conveniently. Why should they tolerate anything less when it comes to their customer service experience? Their expectation will be for a customer service experience as intuitive and responsive as every other application on their smartphones. Basically, this is a customer that won’t have the patience or understanding to be transferred from one agent to another during a customer service call.
Generation Z is the first truly digital native generation, meaning they have never lived in a world without the internet. They operate at digital speed and expect the same from their customer experience. Information access for this generation has always been fast and logical. Efficiency is highly important to this generation.
One factor common to both Millennials and Gen Z’ers is their propensity to share their experiences on social media, including service experiences both good and bad. Brand loyalty is almost non-existent among this customer demographic and they won’t hesitate to take their business to another company after just one bad customer service experience.
One of the contact center practices that has changed the least over the past 40 years is inbound customer call routing. 40 years ago, an inbound customer call was routed to the first available agent regardless of that agent’s skills, experience, or ability to handle the requirements of an individual caller. Call routing strategies today haven’t changed substantially from what they were 40 years ago. With the exception of skills-based routing, which routes calls to specific groups based on a broad definition of skills, inbound calls still go to the first available agent.
If any contact center is going to survive the generational customer experience changes that the entire industry is now facing, this relatively primitive means of routing incoming customer calls must be retired in favor of a call routing strategy appropriate for the next generation of customers. The answer to this rapidly emerging call routing challenge is Predictive Behavioral Routing.
In 2018, NICE acquired call routing solutions leader Mattersight. Mattersight introduced Predictive Behavioral Routing in 2014 and revolutionized the concept of efficient call routing and the customer experience. Rather than simply routing the call to the first available agent, the Predictive Behavioral Routing server communicates with the ACD to intelligently route calls to the best available agent based upon customer personality, behavioral data, and communications.
NICE added a healthy dose of analytics to Mattersight’s behavioral modeling and its industry-leading database of customer behavioral profiles so each incoming call is optimized in terms of routing to the agent whose skills and ability best match the profile of the customer caller.
Predictive Behavioral Routing represents the beginning of a new era in efficient call routing in response to the expectations and requirements of the next generation of customers. Matching customers with agents with the right skill set to best meet the customers’ needs and behavioral profiles will not only optimize the customer experience, it will provide the contact center with the significant cost savings that come with increased first call resolution (FCR) and decreased average handle time (AHT). For more detailed information about Predictive Behavioral Routing, how it works and how it is changing the definition of efficient contact center call routing, be sure to download and listen to this webinar.
