Almost three-fourths of organizations have (32.3%), or are planning to hire this year (41.5%), a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) or an executive-level role in charge of the customer experience, according to Metrigy research. With customer engagement channels multiplying and changing, and response time expectations growing, one of the key duties of most CCOs is to create a “customer first” mentality across the organization — where every employee is in tune with the customers’ wants and needs and can help respond to them if needed.

In many cases though, there is still a physical and digital divide between the individuals who hear from, and speak to, customers every day (contact center agents) and the rest of the employee base. This is having a negative effect on key customer satisfaction ratings and KPIs including:

  • Response time
  • Average handling time
  • Average speed of answer
  • First contact resolution (FCR)
  • Customer effort score
  • Abandonment rate
  • Net promoter score (NPS)

In a recent 2021 State of the Contact Center survey of 400 contact center and CX leaders, communication silos were identified as one of the top challenges to CX, with 58% saying that multiple systems and the inability of agents to communicate and collaborate with organizational SMEs was having a negative impact on customer satisfaction. Fifty-five percent of this segment (55%) reported this negative CSAT impact was moderate to extreme (see the infographic).

Bridging the Divide

This is leading to more and more organizations integrating their unified communications (UC) and contact center (CC) technologies. And Metrigy research shows that organizations that integrate UC and CC with a single vendor, empowering the contact center and the rest of the business to communicate, collaborate and share insights, are achieving significant results:

  • 37% improvement in agent efficiency
  • 14% cost decrease
  • 57% customer rating improvement from customers receiving faster and better responses and resolution through the help of organizational SMEs
  • and a nearly 100% revenue improvement for the areas affected by the integration (for example, a contact center that handles a particular product and now taps into non-agent experts not just to help close cases, but to close cross-sell and upsell sales opportunities)

Listen to Metrigy CEO Robin Gareiss talk about these results below and further in this on-demand webinar.

Want to learn more about the rise of the Chief Customer Officer and the focus on integrating UC and CC technologies to increase both customer satisfaction and revenue? Download Metrigy’s eBook and read more about 8x8's integrated UC and CC platform.