Why Digital-First Contact Centers Remain Ahead of the Competition

While we may all be grateful, we no longer live in a ‘digital only’ world, the digital experience has become core to how we interact with brands.

The number of digital products and services we use day-to-day has increased rapidly, with digital elements playing a part in almost every customer interaction. To maintain service levels and meet customer demands, customer service delivery must be designed with the digital experience at its core. Contact centers must become “digital-first.”

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What does “Digital-First” mean in the contact center?

Where once phone, mail, and in-person support and resources were the pillars of a great customer experience, these channels are increasingly moving to the periphery. They are still important, but digital experience forms the core, and even in-person and voice interactions are supported by digital technology.

Digital-first doesn’t just refer to a selection of tools or ability to communicate through certain channels — it’s a strategy and philosophy.

It means updating and rebuilding all contact center systems — software, content, communications, reporting, analysis, and even culture — focusing on optimizing for digital use. All the stages and building blocks of the customer journey must be designed with flexibility, compatibility, and scalability in mind. Ideally, that means a single platform that can support communications and content delivery across every channel now and in the future.

Why go “Digital-First”?

Customers want to be able to communicate with brands and organizations on every platform they use and move between them as and when it suits them.

This ‘trend’ isn’t going anywhere. NICE found that 90% of Gen Z use digital channels as their channel of choice, with only 10% choosing voice. More interesting still, nearly half of GenX (49%) prefer digital channels as their channel of choice. The other half prefer voice, but their numbers are diminishing.

While voice and in-person will certainly remain an important element for delivering great customer service, it’s clear that contact centers in the future must go “digital-first” to stay competitive.

Beyond the Transformation: Digital-First Customer Service

Implementing a new tech stack or unified Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform isn’t enough to call yourself a digital-first contact center. It’s about more than just the tools you use; it’s a completely different
approach. Going digital-first is a strategy to help organizations easily manage and navigate the rapid change the market forces on them.

As technology accelerates change in the business landscape, companies must become digital-first to keep up with customer expectations. Where customer service in the past was static, reactive, and efficiency-orientated, great customer service in the future must be dynamic, proactive, and convenience-focused.

Proactive vs. Reactive Service

The entire customer service experience is based on the principle that the customer goes first. They are the ones who reach out with a problem or request, and the entirety of the customer support framework is based around responding to that in an efficient, timely manner. Even new tools like chatbots and knowledge bases rely on the customer taking the initiative.

A proactive customer support operation uses data from its entire array of channels — and relevant external, telemetry, product usage, profile, and historical transactional data — to anticipate when a customer may need support.

That might mean predicting the failure of a key component and suggesting a service check. It could be as simple as offering a customer a call-back when they encounter a complex problem. A customer experience where the company reaches out to you to solve your problem is worlds away from one that requires navigating endless web pages
and a long wait on hold.

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