Streamlined processes. Improved efficiencies. Refined manageability. What do these have in common? They all help improve the cost-effectiveness and overall customer service of a Contact Center.
2017 Contact Center trends are focused on the integration of data between disparate systems to achieve business goals. Top CC Trends include:
A Continued Shift to Omni-channel Communications
A holistic view of the customer experience, factoring in an Omni-channel approach is helping businesses give customers a more personal feel to resolutions. Businesses are recognizing that while a customer journey may begin on one channel, valuable insight and feedback from the customer is taking place on a completely different channel. Unifying customer communications across channels gives businesses better context for their customers, helps resolve issues quicker and assists sales agents in identifying better opportunities for future sales.
Robust Customer Satisfaction Measurements
Customer satisfaction sends telling signals to companies about where and how their businesses could improve and what to invest in. Using effective reporting and analytics tools that are integrated with communications systems makes this process automated, and in turn, very valuable. The Negative Response Rate (NRR) strategy created by Amazon has become a benchmark for calculating contact center customer satisfaction in 2017.
Sophisticated Contact Center Analytics
Call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages and more are being used within Omni-center contact centers to build custom dashboards for agents and managers to get real-time updates on customer experiences. Sophisticated types of analytical tools include speech analysis and predictive analytics. Language processing allows customers to answer questions directly into the phone so they can be vetted to the appropriate answer or call center person(s). The caller’s tone is analyzed, using vocabulary and sentiment to gauge emotion and satisfaction, and also to determine their age. Depending on the caller’s age, they will be directed to an agent that they may appreciate more based on their demographic.
Together, both speech and predictive analytics can even detect if a customer is getting frustrated or angry, or if they are lying and potentially trying to commit fraud. These predictive model insights assist agents in understanding how to best handle different types of calls to boost their effectiveness and the customer experience.
Intelligent Robotic Process Automation
The identification and analyzation of call center data so as to create an automated process for repeatable, time-consuming tasks has become paramount in contact centers. Real-time data is automated and triggers events and connections with other systems. This is machine to machine communication at its best.
Enabled Remote Call Center Agents
With collaboration tools, contact center agents can work remotely, using mobile access to real-time analytics and customer context. This results in lower overhead, more time zone flexibility and flexible working hours. With unified cloud communications constantly improving, remote workers have become a permanent (and beneficial) part of the contact center structure and have resulted from the trend towards more integrated systems in 2017.
Artificial Intelligence Integrated into Customer Interactions
Businesses are getting even deeper into predictive analytics, using artificial intelligence (AI) applications to help streamline contact center experiences for customers and agents models.
The contact center of the future will be able anticipate a customer’s inquiry and predict what they need. For example, a woman calling for emergency roadside assistance, will immediately be put into the top of the queue. Her call would be marked as a priority due to its immediacy in nature. Through augmented AI conversation, key terms are them pulled from the conversation she is having with the agent to determine her location and that she needs a tow truck. If later that year, the same woman decides she wants to change her payment information and dials her roadside assistance company again to make this change, this request ca be automated through a virtual assistant that will call her to confirm the change. All of these AI solutions help to automate and increase the efficiency of the call center process.
Check out TBI’s contact center providers for more information on R&D and what’s new in the world of contact center technology.
About the Author:
As Digital Marketing Manager at TBI, Amanda is responsible for creating and writing engaging content and assisting with internal and external communications programs. She manages a portion of the digital marketing efforts for both the TBI and Omnicenter teams, including social media, strategy, and execution. You can reach Amanda at aroszkowski@tbicom.com connect with her on LinkedIn.
