New Benchmarks For Customer Contact Performance

What worked yesterday will not necessarily drive success today. It will almost certainly not ensure a fruitful tomorrow.

Customer contact leaders have long recognized this reality. They acknowledged that the strategies, metrics, processes, and investments they leveraged in the phone-only “cost center” days would not guarantee success in the value-driven, omnichannel world. This universal acceptance did not, however, translate into widespread action. Many contact centers remained married to “business as usual,” leading to mediocre agent performance and suboptimal customer experiences.

Always a disappointment, the hazard of complacency became unprecedentedly clear amid the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021. As demands rose, volume surged, complexity grew, and digital utilization skyrocketed, companies gained a front-row seat to the importance of change. If they did not outright struggle to support customers throughout the omnichannel journey, those who rejected change at least failed to maximize the value of their interactions.

As they are no able longer to deny the importance of addressing new customer demands, new agent environments, and new technological innovations, it will be interesting to see how contact center leaders assess and activate contact center performance in the months and years ahead. This Market Study offers a window into that journey.

Fueled by CCW Digital market research, the report uncovers how companies are quantifying performance, faring in the omnichannel world, and rallying people, processes, and technology to transform their contact centers into sources of unrivaled value.