The Covid pandemic is more or less in the rearview mirror and companies that were affected by the restrictions are a long way into a strong recovery. However, there are some clouds on the horizon. Inflation is certainly higher than most of us are used to – it was 8.5% in July of 2022. Some economists are warning that unemployment has to be allowed to increase to force inflation down.
It’s hard to really judge what is going to happen. Some analysts are saying we are seeing a great recovery from the chaos of the pandemic years and others say that prices are going up too fast. Cautious observers are suggesting that inflation has peaked and is now slowly declining, but the truth is we are watching an economic recovery that is being buffeted on all sides.
Goldman Sachs analysts estimate that the US economy can be cooled slowly without tipping into recession. However, The Economist is more pessimistic and suggests that at some point in 2023 the economy will be in decline.
Let’s not talk ourselves into a recession – it’s clear that many analysts believe it’s possible to cool inflation slowly. However, it’s also clear that the world is a very uncertain place right now. Energy prices are fluctuating and many of the supply chain issues that began during Covid have yet to be resolved.
Smart executives need to plan for an uncertain year or two. This requires an agile customer experience (CX) strategy that allows your business to flex when needed, but also not be paying for resources you don’t need.
What does this mean for your customer service processes? You can’t destroy the experience customers have with your brand by cutting back on the number of people working in customer service. This kind of uncertain economic environment is exactly when you need to double down on delivering a great experience to your customers – to keep existing customers loyal and to promote your brand for customer acquisition.
GigCX offers a strategic way to augment your core customer service team so you can always manage the peak call volumes when they occur, but your team can be instantly reduced when the peak is over.
In an uncertain business environment there is always one mantra from the board – manage your costs. This is a tough ask in traditional customer service processes, but if you can create a GigCX layer then you only need to pay the agents as they help customers. There is no idle time. No need for more full-time equivalents (FTEs) on the payroll. If you are paying in this way for CX as a service then you can maintain a core team – they can be internal or outsourced to a specialist contact center partner. You can add the flexible GigCX on top of the core to build this extremely flexible service layer. Keep a core team, but manage the flexibility with GigCX.
Remember that idea – do more with less. Don’t pay for idle time. Just pay each time a customer is helped. You don’t need to transform your entire service center to function this way, but by allowing a GigCX layer to handle the peaks you can avoid all the ongoing cost issues of having more people than required just to manage during busy sporadic peak periods. LiveXchange Technologies is experienced in helping internal and outsourced customer service teams handle seasonality. Our home-based professionals help companies manage seasonal, weekly, and daily call volume peaks so customers are not disappointed by their favorite brands. Take a look at our website for more information.
This article was written by Terry Rybolt, CRO at LiveXchange. If you are interested in connecting with him and learning more about GigCX click here.