Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the call center sector experienced a sharp rise in challenging calls and customer service demands.
Navigating through a crisis is more difficult than ever with call center firms dealing with internal challenges, including changing to remote work setup, coping with out-of-date procedures, and attempting to keep sales statistics afloat amid financial issues.
Unexpectedly, even the greatest call center software these days is insufficient to improve the service. Excellent call center service will remain elusive until people try to keep ahead of the curve in this industry.
New Call Center Trends and Predictions — A Vision for the Future
Here are a few top trends that are expected to guide future call centers.
-
AI has arrived and is here to stay.
Undoubtedly, technology’s disruptive potential has influenced practically every shift in the call center industry. New call center solutions have often appeared due to the hectic pace of invention. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the newest technologies to join this industry.
-
The power behind analytics
Earlier, contact centers mainly depended on the management’s knowledge and abilities to increase the agents’ output and effectiveness. However, events might quickly surpass this technique in today’s data-driven world, especially in the face of something as significant as a worldwide pandemic.
Call centers are implementing adaptive management in a paradigm-shifting method to enhance customer service and increase performance, but an unprecedented crisis makes adoption more challenging.
We all know that inbound call center services are hubs of customer-business relations. Analyzing the data generated by these encounters may provide insights regarding agent productivity and customer habits.
The focus of call center metrics has been on measures like initial call resolution, average handling time, and agent idle time.
-
Omnichannel communication — A new norm
The trend has evolved and is currently the characteristic that distinguishes proactive companies from the reactive versions of their rivals. How important is omnichannel communication?
Nowadays, almost all consumers possess multiple devices. Additionally, they detest being limited to a single communication channel or touchpoint. Consumers long for the flexibility to engage with a business wherever they are—on social media, live chat, over the phone, via SMS, and more.
Omnichannel communication is useful in such situations since clients, regardless of the channel they use, deserve a tailored and consistent experience.
Read Also: How To Get a Better Night’s Sleep During Menopause
-
Tools for advanced self-service
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the number of clients needing support has more than doubled. However, not all issues require the aid of a live person, which is where self-service tactics and solutions may be useful.
91% of customers, according to Freshworks’ research, would prefer to use self-service tools to discover solutions if offered. It serves to highlight how crucial self-service is to customers.
It is not to say that customer service is not important. Still, self-service is progressively replacing other forms of customer support.
Additionally, customers now strongly prefer independence and ease while finding solutions to their problems. Self-service tools are the means for it.
-
The rise in the use of recall technology
Humans are bound to make mistakes, and call center operators are no different. Fortunately, advancements in filtering technology allow people to prevent miscommunications from damaging their brand’s reputation.
Take recall technology as an illustration. Brands are deploying this filtering technology in contact centers with AI to weed out unreliable or undesirable conversations. 83% of call centers focus highly on AI, and 54% of CEOs attest to its efficacy (Informs Connect, 2021).
Thanks to recalling technology, the inbound call center service prices may prevent clients from receiving incorrect information. In addition, it also catches and corrects the mistakes that occur in dialogue.
-
Digital transformation
Brands have historically distinguished themselves from rivals by charging a higher price or providing higher-quality goods or services. Nevertheless, this strategy is no longer sufficient to attract clients to a brand.
Consumers nowadays are drawn to companies that provide experiences that result in favorable, long-term ties with the brand.
Due to the complexity of consumer demands, businesses must rethink their approach to client contact. They must effectively manage customer engagement by doing it within the context of the overall strategy rather than as a stand-alone task. It indicates that the call center setting is one in which digital transformation is essential.
-
Cloud communications
Businesses have long used cloud communication as a more comprehensive communication strategy component. However, until recently, the concept of cloud communications in call centers was incomprehensible.
Call centers may now use cloud communication thanks to the continuous rise of remote call agents and the spread of project management tools.
Brands are already setting up cloud-based platforms that let agents connect with customers remotely like they would in physical locations.
Conclusion
The call center industry will continue to see increased competition, but the major difficulty remains with the impact of COVID-19. The trends we’ve discovered should help people predict how things will turn out. They must find out how to adapt their company to these developments to succeed in the call center industry. It would help if they adapted to new call center technology trends, such as AI, sophisticated IVR, and recall improvements. Additionally, the time to do so is now if they haven’t embraced cloud communication.
