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Press Release

Part 2: Evolution of the Contact Centre study raises important questions for contact centres

Puzzel has partnered with the CCMA to study how contact centres are changing.

London, 18 November 2020: The outcomes of part two of the CCMA’s (Call Centre Management Association) Evolution of the Contact Centre research initiative with Puzzel, a leading Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) provider, exploring how the industry is changing have been released.

“The contact centre industry was thrown a real curve ball earlier this year and it successfully responded to the challenges it faced,” explains CCMA CEO, Leigh Hopwood. “In this second wave of research into how contact centre operations are evolving it is encouraging to discover that contact centre leaders are now well and truly back in the driving seat and are considering key strategies for the new year.”

This is the second in a series of research reports exploring the future of the contact centre. The first wave was published in August 2020) and explored how contact centres were responding to the first lockdown, rapidly ramping-up remote working and agile operations. This second wave picks up where the first left off and examines the outlook for the short and longer-term future.

“As our research reveals, contact centre leaders across the nation are busy ensuring near-term operational success in light of sustained increased demand,” says Stephen Yap, Research Director at the CCMA. “They are also working against longer-term goals: building skills and career opportunities for their teams, and strengthening the role their contact centres play within their businesses, forging closer links with other functions and acting as the voice of the customer within their organisation.”

The research surfaces important questions that all contact centre leaders should be asking as attention turns to the new year and beyond:

  1. How can you protect your team and provide them with the certainty, consistency and control they need to stay motivated during the remainder of the pandemic period?
  2. How will you balance the needs of the individual and the organisation when planning resources and flexible working arrangements?
  3. How do you anchor remote working colleagues around the values and purpose of an organisation?
  4. Are you offering upskilling and progression pathways to mitigate attrition and facilitate mobility to and from other parts of the organisation?
  5. Are you effectively capturing customer insight in your contact centres, and enabling other departments to act on this intelligence?

Jonathan Allan, CMO at Puzzel, said: “Contact centres have undergone considerable change over the past few months. They’ve faced extraordinary challenges – many never faced before – but have adapted, persevered, and innovated with impressive speed.

This second wave of research builds on our initial findings, exploring how contact centres are responding to the latest challenges across the industry and how they plan to tackle the future. With coronavirus restrictions still limiting travel and social gatherings across the UK, organisations are asking how they can continue supporting their customers while protecting and motivating their teams and maintaining productivity.

It is now more important than ever for contact centres to take the lessons learned during the early stages of the pandemic and use them to build stronger pathways forward, embracing their newfound status and agility to achieve success in the future.”

You can access and read the full report here.

About the CCMA

The CCMA (Call Centre Management Association) is the longest established association representing the contact centre industry in the UK. The membership organisation supports contact centre leaders through providing opportunities to network; to openly share best practice and to increase their skills and knowledge through specialist training. Its aim is to offer timely and impartial advice to its members; to keep contact centre leaders in touch with changes in their industry; to provide credible benchmarking information and to help individuals maintain an awareness of the latest trends and developments.

For more info, visit www.ccma.org.uk.

About Puzzel

Puzzel is the leading European Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) provider. Our award-winning Customer Service Platform consists of three fully integrated, cloud-based solutions, including an omni-channel and AI-enabled Contact Centre, advanced email and Ticketing and Workforce Management, which are easy to use, quick to set-up and scalable for contact centres of all sizes. Customers can also customise the platform with dozens of third-party integrations available through our Puzzel Marketplace. Puzzel was recognised as a Challenger in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant report for Contact Centre as a Service in Western Europe and ranked in the top three European CCaaS providers for 2020 by Frost & Sullivan. Based in Norway, and with offices across Scandinavia, Europe, the UK and Asia, we work with more than 900 customers across 40 different countries, helping businesses to achieve success beyond voice, connected experiences and empowered employees.

For more information, please visit www.puzzel.com.

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