For today’s companies, the customer service experience launched by e-commerce giants like Amazon has been a blessing and a curse. 

The good news is that this model introduced companies in an industry that has been famously slow to embrace contact center innovations to entirely new possibilities for delivering a personalized customer experience. 

The bad news is that customers expect it all of the time and everywhere. 

Like most customers, manufacturing customers expect an Amazon-like experience from call centers, such as immediate resolutions, personalized attention, and a tailored experience when interacting with call centers. But with challenges like staffing shortages, supply chain issues, and a lack of technology to remedy those challenges, meeting customer expectations isn’t as consistent as people would like, resulting in issues like long wait times, little to no help with resolutions unique to the customer’s situation, and limited access to services. 

A great contact center customer experience serves as a vital gateway for building and nurturing customer relationships. It is often the first point of direct interaction between a customer and a company, shapes the initial impression, and sets the tone for future engagements. 

When relying on your product isn’t enough to sway customers, providing exceptional service through contact centers, can demonstrate your company’s commitment to customer satisfaction, responsiveness, and problem resolution. 

Effective communication, personalized interactions, and efficient omnichannel issue resolution and innovations lay the foundation for long-term relationships, driving customer retention, repeat business, and positive word-of-mouth referrals. 

If your contact center falls short of those expectations, it’s time to build a new customer experience from the ground up. 

1. Long Wait Times 

In manufacturing, any downtime can result in substantial losses, whether it’s due to equipment malfunctions, production halts, or supply chain disruptions.

Surveys show that 85 percent of customers expect to reach out to a customer service team instantly when they call a company, and around 45 percent of customers report feeling annoyed or upset when they are kept in the queue for 5-15 minutes. 

Based on these statistics, 15 minutes could mean the difference between reinforcing a valued customer relationship or losing it for good. In an industry where time is of the essence, minimizing wait times in contact centers becomes crucial to ensuring seamless operations and customer satisfaction.

2. No Personalized Engagement 

In manufacturing, the product itself may be simple but the process of satisfying the “when” and “how” the customer wants it can get tricky. Customers often have unique needs and technical requirements that demand tailored solutions. Without personalization, agents may struggle to understand the specific challenges faced by each customer, leading to generic responses that fail to address the root cause of the issue. 

Around 75 percent of business leaders realize that deeper customization contributes to increased customer retention (and about 60 percent feel it decreases acquisition costs). 

This lack of tailored support means prolonged troubleshooting processes, increased frustration on the part of the customer, and ultimately, a negative impact on customer satisfaction levels. 

3. No Omnichannel Self-Service Options

Studies show that 77 percent of customers say they view brands more positively if they provide self-service options for customers looking for support. But there’s a catch: 

Although 83 percent of respondents say they would use an online community for self-service support, and around 92 percent would be satisfied with access to a knowledge base for support, they also prefer access to live agents for immediate assistance with resolutions through various channels like email, live chat, and live video-based support for remote diagnostics and issue resolution

Without these options, customers may feel frustrated as they navigate through traditional support channels, such as phone calls or emails, which can be time-consuming and inefficient. 

4. Complicated Self-Service Processes

The only thing worse than lacking self-service options is to provide bad ones. 

Bad self-service options are like offering someone a broken compass when they’re lost in the woods – it might give them hope, but it’s not really pointing them in the right direction. 

When the self-service options are subpar, it’s like being stuck in a maze with no clear exit. 

“Self-service options usually fail because of bad design, but there’s a little more to it,” said Adam Bém, COO and co-founder of Victoria VR. He explained that many projects begin with designs that have confusing navigation or inefficiencies because the designer imagined most users would take a specific workflow. 

“Self-service platforms have to be easy to modify — not just for adjusting areas of improvement, but also for meeting changing demands in a fast-paced market,” Bém said.

5. Old Ideas and Technology

In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect lightning-fast responses and cutting-edge solutions. If you’re not keeping up with the times, you’re not just falling behind – you’re losing out on opportunities left and right. 

Simple but impactful technology-based innovations that offer real-time updates to inventory, shipments, and customer orders, for instance, allow you to provide customers with all the information they need. Around 26 percent of consumers report being transferred among agents with no resolution. 

Giving agents frontline authority to offer resolutions based on increased access to customer information also improves the customer experience by eliminating the need to transfer calls to another agent. 

As the initial point of direct interaction, contact centers set the tone for future engagements. Effective communication, personalized interactions, and efficient omnichannel issue resolution are the cornerstones of a successful contact center strategy, laying the foundation for long-term relationships and driving customer retention and positive referrals. 

But this doesn’t happen by chance. You need a plan. We can help! When the state of your contact center doesn’t meet your expectations, it’s time to talk about a digital transformation plan that is right for you.