Critical Issues
Navigate the future of customer engagement with confidence.
2022 Critical Issues
Each year, Council members in North America and Europe vote on the most important issues facing the customer service industry, in their region of the globe. The annual Critical Issues become the key areas of focus for member discussion and Council events throughout the year.
The Future of the Workforce
Areas of Focus:
- Transforming staffing strategy – recruiting, hiring, retention
- Ensuring technology and processes are in place for successful WFH
- Innovating tech based onboarding and training
Enabling First-Class Self-Serve
Areas of Focus:
- Integrating chatbots, mobile apps, and social media messaging into your self-serve strategy
- Balancing self-serve with live agents
- Delivering seamless self-serve channel transitions
- Facilitating customer adoption of self-service capabilities and driving self-service utilization
- Developing agent aptitude in multiple channels
Optimizing the Customer Experience Journey
Areas of Focus:
- Keeping up with shifting customer expectations across the organization
- Utilizing automation opportunities to reduce customer effort
- Leveraging data driven customer insights for effective decision making
- Analyzing and acting on VoC
- Journey mapping – customer centric right channeling
Achieving Digital Transformation
Areas of Focus:
- Leveraging automation opportunities in the contact center to empower agents to focus on the customer
- Advancing agent skills for the shift to digital channels
- Planning for disruptive digital technologies and their transformational impact across traditional and new channels
Leadership Driven Culture
Areas of Focus:
- Leveraging the VoE to impact the customer experience
- Developing purpose driven agents who embrace their value and are invested in the future success of the company
- Ensuring your employees are nurtured and cared for
- Maintaining customer centricity in a distributed workforce
- Prioritizing your diversity and inclusion strategy
Employee Value Proposition
Areas of Focus:
- Raising the bar to connect on a human level and engage with WFH team members
- Rising to employee empowered rewards; recognition; benefits; pay; and scheduling
- Planning for proactive career pathways within the enterprise
- Measuring employee satisfaction and employee NPS (eNPS)
- Providing omnichannel transparency to the agent