Contact centres are grappling with record staff shortages due to Covid-19. Here’s how a Digital Engagement solution can help you fill the gaps.

The highly contagious Omicron variant is causing widespread staff shortages across the UK and Europe. In contact centres, managers say they’re struggling to fill seats due to agents either being off sick with Covid or having to isolate, making it difficult to maintain service levels.

If your contact centre is short-staffed, a Digital Engagement solution can help you strategically manage your contact volumes without compromising on service quality or sales targets.

“I’ve been consistently hearing from contact centre leaders over the past 30 days that they’re being impacted by high levels of staff sickness – putting pressure on their ability to provide high service levels to customers through voice alone. This is yet another reason why digital enablement, combined with human empathy, is becoming a key focus as contact centres evolve.” — Stephen Yap, Research Director at the Call Centre Management Association (CCMA)

Solving Covid staff shortages with Digital Engagement

Digital Engagement solutions enable businesses to deliver more interactive and personalised customer experiences online. But they’re also an effective channel management tool.

With Digital Engagement, you can identify the intent of every person who visits your website. With this information, you can then guide them to the most efficient and cost-effective channel for their journey or enquiry based on their value to your business, your agent availability, workload and opening hours. This enables you to stay in control of inbound contact volumes and continue to meet your service and sales targets – even when short-staffed.

Many companies today offer the same level of assistance to all visitors on their website. However, this requires a large pool of agents and resources that many contact centres do not have — especially during today’s Covid staffing shortages. Digital Engagement instead helps you maximise your use of digital channels and engage live agents for only the most valuable interactions.

How Puzzel Digital Engagement works:

1. Identify web visitors’ needs in real-time

Almost 90% of customer journeys now begin online. But a common challenge for businesses today is being able to tell who on their website is just browsing, who’s looking for support, and who’s ready to buy.

Our Digital Engagement solution makes this possible by analysing your web visitors’ behaviour in real-time and identifying their intent. With this information, you can then make strategic resourcing decisions such as who to prioritise and how best to serve them.

2. Prioritise high-value customers

Many businesses today offer support on a first-come, first-serve basis. However, if you have thousands of visitors on your website and limited resources due to Covid, you cannot effectively assist vulnerable customers or engage those who are most valuable to your business.

That’s why after analysing your web visitors’ behaviour, our Digital Engagement solution enables you to categorise each individual into a distinct group. These groups can then be prioritised according to their needs and value. While it may not feel ‘fair’, it is the most cost-effective solution for your business.

Web visitors can also be categorised based on their individual customer history and value.

3. Automatically offer the best solution for each customer

Once categorised, you can then create ‘rules’ and ‘triggers’ that engage each type of web visitor with the right offer of support, at the right time.

For example, a high-priority visitor might be offered your most ‘expensive’ channel for support, such as Voice and Live Chat, while a visitor who is only looking for the address of your closest store might be guided to a chatbot. This ensures your live agents are only utilised for your most important and high-value contacts.

If you’re experiencing high demand, customers can also be offered callbacks or a meeting with an expert at a later date.

How can you get started with Digital Engagement?

The Covid-related staff shortages that you’re facing right now won’t last forever. But with a Digital Engagement solution, you’ll walk out of the Covid-19 crisis with a more effective customer service strategy and better digital experience.

We offer Puzzel Digital Engagement as a standalone solution or as part of our Puzzel Customer Service Platform. After adding a global script to your website, it’s ready to be adapted to your unique business needs.