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There's more than its products contributing to Wine Country Gift Baskets' growth. The company’s philosophy informs its everyday practices, which are built around a family-based culture, relationships, the quality of its interactions with customers, and the tools it provides to workers. And with baskets being ordered by and shipped to customers all over the world, the company’s contact center is central to its customer satisfaction and success.

Life in the contact center can feel like a collective emotional journey, and that was never more true than in 2020. You and your customers rode the waves of the uncertainty that defined the year. There was disruption like never before. Contact centers had to adapt quickly to serve customers who were anxious and seeking help. Contact center traffic was also inconsistent and unpredictable. Combine this with the need to suddenly disperse the workforce to their homes and it was a rollercoaster of a year! Ready to prepare for the unexpected? Here are five ways to plan, prepare and provide for your contact centers, your agents and most of all, your customers.

Contact centers build in some downtime for agents during working hours due to lulls in incoming calls because of the occupancy level needed to realize their service level goals. It’s a balancing act: Keep employees busy, but don’t overwork them. But how do you know when busy becomes too busy?

Globally, organisations experienced major business disruption over the course of 2020, and for contact centres, it was no different. Across the industry, we’ve seen a significant shift in the way that contact centres are managed, and how leaders and agents are responding to changing customer behaviours and needs. This shift will likely continue as we settle into the new normal and will impact two of the key factors in how we Work from Anywhere: people and technology. Discover the seven emerging and developing trends that will continue to change the way contact centres work in 2021 and beyond.

“I have terrible news,” your boss wrote in an email late last night. “The project has officially been delayed.”

Your customers are living their lives digitally, so meeting them where they live makes it easier for them to communicate with you. Connecting with customers on platforms that they use and are familiar with goes a long way to driving an exceptional customer experience. Agents can engage with customers on these digital channels but so can bots, using the same rules you're applying to a chat on your website.

Aside from the negative outcomes of the past year, there's one shining example of a positive consequence - the seismic shift towards a work from home model in the general workforce and more specifically among contact center agents and staff.