As call center technologies get more and more sophisticated, customers have become more accustomed to highly enriched, intuitive and efficient interactions when they contact a customer service call center. As a call center service provider, your organization must be committed to staying at the forefront of the contact center technology race in order to remain competitive. With the increasing use of AI, Machine Learning, Improved Data Analytics, Cloud Strategies and more, your call center will be more capable than ever but it will take a lot of work to get there.
To help guide you and your team on the journey to take advantage of these transformational call center technologies, we want to quickly touch on 3 call center technology trends that will impact how your company services your customers.
Cloud Technologies are Here and They are Not Going Anywhere
In recent years, call center providers have learned a great deal about how to improve the service interactions they have with their customers. Call center providers have opened up whole new channels to communicate with their customers such as email, chat, SMS text, social media and more. Call center service providers are also increasingly using more and more data and analytics approaches to learn about what their customers want from them so they can improve service interactions, but also to proactively address customer needs BEFORE they contact their service organization. In order to unlock the potential of all of these technologies, service providers need to “get on the cloud”. Call center companies all over the world have heard the call on this. Worldwide call center are rapidly moving from premise-based ACD solutions and technologies to cloud-based services that offer the flexibility they need to morph their approach as the needs of their customers evolve. It is our strong belief that any call center service provider that does not take full advantage of cloud technologies and all they have to offer, will ultimately lose the battle with their competition.
AI – The Rise of the Machines?
We began to hear rumblings of the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in call centers almost 10 years ago. The talk got louder and louder as IVRs and web-based applications became more and more intuitive. However, it did not really catch fire until very recently. Now, the capability of AI solutions are evolving at an exponential rate. Rapid improvements in voice recognition technology, data management, machine learning capabilities, and just sheer processing power have enabled AI “agents” to now completely process simple and even some more complex customer interactions, without any need for a human agent. Don’t believe it. Check out this Video of the Google Assistant actually processing a whole call. (https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332070/google-assistant-makes-phone-call-demo-duplex-io-2018) The AI voice even uses mannerisms and filler phrases that many humans would use in this type of interaction. The use of AI and Machine Learning technologies in the contact center space is only going to accelerate with time. As a call center service provider, if your organization can figure out how to leverage these technologies to their fullest, they will significantly improve your customer’s experience with your company as well as improve your bottom-line.
Intelligent Call Routing
The traditional approach of routing customer phone calls to available agents is a straightforward mix of skills-based routing and % allocation to maximize the productivity of every agent. As with everything else in the call center industry, things are changing. Capacity planning and call routing have become an extremely complex and data-driven activity. With advances in cloud telephony, analytics, AI and more, companies can now apply “predictive analytics” to every interaction before it reaches an agent. This allows organizations to maximize the monetary and non-monetary value of every call. Today, sales or direct response calls can be evaluated based on marketing channel as well as potential value and then get “intelligently” routed to specific call centers and agents that are best suited to handle that call. Also, more and more companies today are taking advantage “bulk call center routing” where companies have many outsource call center providers, or captive centers, on their systems and they route customer calls to the call center operations who are performing the best; in real time. This approach works well for business continuity but also ensures companies are maximizing the value of every interaction they are having with their customer. Also, all of this technology and servicing capability generates a massive amount of extremely valuable data that call centers and companies can use to add more value to their customers.
As you can see, the call center industry is in the midst of a “sea change” to the way it has traditionally conducted business. The demands of their customers, the rapid evolution of technology and the sheer pace of change today, make running a call center extremely challenging. The technologies mentioned above are not going away and will continue to push the envelope on how call centers all over the world will do business. Call centers are hard and knowing how to find and leverage the best technology for your call center is difficult. You don’t have to do it alone.
Call Center Power is at the forefront of these trends and so many others in the call center industry. We have years of experience identifying, designing and implementing call center technologies that drive improved results and ROI for companies all over the world.
Find out how Call Center Power can help you today!
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