Hello Human,
Welcome to the December edition of our monthly industry newsletter! As the second coronavirus wave is spreading violently almost universally around the world, the customer service industry once again feels the full impact of the pandemic for its employees and customers. While consumers continue to shift their purchases online, we are experiencing a record-breaking kick-off to the Holiday season.
Everything about this Holiday season is different though, which includes the way most of us are shopping. We were very cautious with respect to the expectations of the holiday shopping season in our last newsletter; however, early numbers for the period of early September through the Thanksgiving weekend show that while traditional retail experienced the quietest weekend in 20 years (-8.6%), online sales exploded (+40.3%) resulting in a 2.1% rise of overall retail sales compared with 2019! The total share of online retail is now 27.2%, compared with 18.7% last year. Given those optimistic trends, NRF now predicts that holiday retail sales will rise a stunning 3.6 to 5.2% which I personally find incredible given the circumstances of the economy!
This surge in online orders is pushing the delivery networks to the edge of its capacity. This became apparent when UPS told his drivers to stop picking up packages from retailers when they reach capacity which caused delays and forced retailers to be even more creative with deliveries. Macy's and other retailers were quick in offering in-store pickup, contactless curbside pickup, and same-day deliveries through DoorDash.
What does this mean for the customer service industry? Volume levels are continuing to break records every day; however, while we saw contact volumes wildly spiking during the early month of the pandemic when volume shifted to e-commerce, we now see volume trends more orderly in-line with forecasts. This, we believe, is a result of retailers securing their supply chains, improving their fulfillment capabilities and setting the right expectations with their customers by putting in place better proactive communication plans. As expected we see a continuous rise of chat, a surprisingly strong phone channel and a declining email channel.
Looking back at 2020, we have seen the customer service industry change forever. The rapid move to work@home environments and cloud based contact center solutions accelerated beyond expectations but some of the most anticipated trends also did not materialize. What for example happened to SMS? While hyped as one of the biggest trends in the past 2 years, it has not taken off as widely as expected. In Fonolo's latest edition of their customer service trend reports, the company points out that the roll-out of SMS in the contact center has been extremely slow and may never fully materialize. Reasons for this might be (i) the efficiency of existing real time communication channels such as chat, (ii) more efficient and better integrated in-app messaging platforms and (iii) the never veining dominance of the traditional phone channel. So, while messaging is key in an omnichannel servicing model, SMS is not the solution yet.
We do believe that the pandemic driven work@home push will create a new normal which companies have to build into their operating model. A recent survey by PwC found that after Covid-19, 74% of executives expect half of their workforce to work from home at least one day of the week. That means managing a team remotely will become the “new normal.” Companies need to realize that one of the big challenges for 2021 will be bringing back their employees into the corporate office environment. The forced work@home trial was in many cases very successful both for corporations and for employees. Companies like VIPdesk, which pioneered the virtual home-based customer service model, have seen a lasting verification of their existing business models. 79% of employees and 77% of executives participating in the PwC survey stated that employee productivity was either the same or higher than it was pre-COVID. In addition, we all have to realize that while COVID will most likely be behind us by the end of 2021, we most likely will encounter new pandemics in the near future. That's why we firmly believe that the customer service industry will shift to a more hybrid servicing model which will include permanent built-in work@home capabilities. It is not an easy undertaking and establishing a strong, productive and rewarding company culture is a major challenge. The biggest trend for 2021 will therefore be doing "work@home better". Remote training & learning, QM, team-member mentoring and gamification will need to be all part of a coherent work@home contact center strategy. We have featured below a new whitepaper which provides all the information for a productive, happy and healthy work@home implementation.
As always, I would be very grateful for any feedback and suggestions for this publication as we are trying to be most helpful with the information presented.
We would like to wish all our readers a great Holiday Season and are looking forward to an exciting New Year.
Othmar Müller von Blumencron
Vice President Sales & Marketing
908 King Street, Suite 400 W
Alexandria, VA 22314
+1-703-348-2236 (office)
+1-703-926-7691 (mobile)
oblumencron@VIPdeskConnect.com
