By leveraging call centers with the latest technology, all kinds of ventures can gain tremendous growth. With the changing time, call centers are also changing. So, let’s talk about the changes and future trends in call centers. Call centers have already begun adopting the latest technologies.
Here are some glimpses of these new technologies to be seen in the future and trends in 2022
Role of Call Centers
Call centers are the imperative aspects of businesses. They improve the services and relationships with customers, provide effective communication, and bring sales and profit. Call centers address the customers’ issues and grievances. When customers get the immediate solution, they begin trusting in the products and services of a specific company. In short, the company earns goodwill. These satisfied customers turn to the specific company again and become loyal to the company for a long time. This increases the Customer Life Time Value (CLV) for the brand.
But, it requires the implementation of new technologies to provide excellent services. The good thing is call centers are getting the required attention. Companies have begun investing in the newest and innovative technologies in call centers. They understand that these new innovative technologies will improve the quality of call agents. Hence, customers will get more efficient services and that too without waiting for long.
Why do Companies Need to Invest in Call Centers?
Pandemic disrupted the entire world. Call centers are not the exception. Call agents too had to face many challenges. The number of complex calls increased massively. Consequently, it increased the burden on the call agents. The rise in call volumes was witnessed across the globe. The call centers were not ready to handle such a large call volume. As a result, it increases the average handle time and abandonment rate. Plus, average hold or queue time also increased.
Moreover, call centers had to opt for remote working due to social distancing norms. In short, it has brought a bad impact on businesses in such a tough time. The reason is call centers were not equipped with the latest technologies, many of them had not migrated to the cloud and could not readily provide their agents a Work From Home (WFH) solution. So, businesses can face such challenges successfully only if they invest in the call centers and leverage them with the latest technologies.
Benefits of Investing in Call Centers
Agents in Call centers communicate with current and potential customers over calls. It helps them to know about their issues. Further, they suggest the right solutions to the customers. As a result, it drives better customer satisfaction (CSAT). Improved CSAT ensures long-term business and provides sales growth and profit. So, investing in call centers that include people, processes, and technology becomes a priority.
Besides, here are some other benefits:-
1. Reduce Customer Agent’s Burden:
Investing in the right technologies improves the efficiency of your call agent. Plus, it makes their jobs much easier. For example, if you invest in AI-based technologies, it will help your agent to manage all types of interaction with customers from one central location. So, equip your contact center with the newest software and make their work simpler.
2. Makes Your Contact Center More Effective:
Powerful contact center tools make managers’ work a lot easier. For example, managers can record their calls, analyze the flaws in agents’ calls, coach their agents and explain to them the best way to interact with customers. All these efforts will make your call center more effective.
3. Helps Agents to Provide Better Service:
Thanks to the call routing functionality based on skills and IVR systems, customers can be connected with the appropriate agents who can help them right away. Additionally, agents get comprehensive data that helps them to perform their jobs well.
4. Helps to Boost Sales:
Contact centers provide comprehensive data of the customers to their agents. The more information you get about a customer, the more it helps you to sell your products. The accumulated information about the customers helps call agents to understand the customer journey and the specific needs of their customers. Hence, call agents can recommend personalized products and services, and even some ongoing offers. As a result, it helps to boost sales for the company.
5. Organize the Call Centers:
Agents have to deal with numerous calls every day. Here, they need to access various customers’ data like buying history, contact history, etc. Call agents need it in seconds to solve customers’ queries. So, it is important to keep the customer’s data organized. Organized information helps them to make calls frequently and solve the customers’ issues. Integration with service CRMs or Omnichannel helps in a big way to have access to organized data.
So, it is clear that investing in the latest and right technologies can bring the best results to your call center business. Further, you need to implement these technologies in your call center smartly to get the desired results. But, before you can invest in the latest technologies, you need to know about the latest technology trends in call centers.
Future Technology Trends in Call Centers
The pandemic has been a great transformation agent. It has made brands aware that they can’t compete without investing in the latest technologies some of which are powered by AI. Take a look at the future technology trends in call centers: -
1. Intelligent Call Routing:
Call Centers are using Intelligent call routing widely. It is expected that the use of intelligent call routing will grow massively in the coming ten years. Traditional call routing is rule-based and static. Intelligent call routing dynamically maps the right agent to the caller based on certain parameters like Agent CSAT score, customer LTV, language, skills, and call intent. As a result, it enhances the outcome of the call and builds trust in your services.
2. Analytics will be the Driving Force:
Analytics uses a variety of tools that organizations employ to get insight into the customers’ information. Brands employ multiple support channels which can be a mix of voice and digital (social media, messaging, bots, etc) to ensure that brands are available for customers wherever they are. Here, analytics can help them to make strategies that can make the best utilization of agents and improve their customer services. For example, based on channel utilization, the supervisor can move more agents on the channel or implement call deflection if call waiting time is going high.
3. Automation Tools will be Used Widely:
Call centers will witness AI-driven automation tools to increase their efficiency. Automation tools will help call centers streamline their internal processes. Plus, these tools help decision-makers to arrive at the best conclusion after providing them with a massive set of data about their clients. For example, Speech Analytics solutions can analyze 100% of call recording and detect the major issues, and flag calls that did not meet compliance. As a result, automation tools cut costs and improve speed, efficiency, and outcome.
4. Digitalizing Processes:
More than 84 percent of organizations had begun digitalizing their processes in 2020. They planned to transition almost 44 percent of their employees to remote work. Unsurprisingly, digitalization and remote working hit a peak in 2021 and now it has become a new norm in 2022. The driving forces behind digitalization in call centers include an increased number of complex calls and customers’ expectations for self-service. The emergence of new digital tools like social media, video, messaging, bots, in-call analytics, post-call analytics has helped call centers to deliver better customer services.
5. Call Agent’s Training through Digital Tools:
When you provide the best training to call agents, they provide the best possible experience to customers. A satisfied customer with your services returns to your business and advertises your business. The QA tools integrated with real-time analytics (voice and text) can help supervisors and team leaders to train their teams. Agents can be coached over the call using the barge-in tools as well.
Conclusion
At last, the latest technology has made it easy to reach customers through chats, voice, messages, and other sources. You can grow your call center businesses in whatever way you wish by leveraging it with AI-based technologies. With the right agent training and the right technology, you can stand out your business by delivering excellent services.
