Adopting the appropriate technology for your contact center is essential for the success and productivity of your business.
In a world of high demand and high expectations, thousands of tools exist to facilitate and personalize customer-agent communications. Times are changing in the contact center industry, and successful businesses are taking advantage of this change. Decision-makers realize that they are in a one-in-a-life-time opportunity to reduce costs and build new streams of revenue as history shows that the most significant shifts in market share usually come at critical technological junctures and world-changing events. Those who take advantage of such opportunities tend to become industry leaders and innovators.
Early Adoption of Technology in Contact Centers
In the contact center industry, adopting new and proven to work technology is essential to enhance KPIs and the overall bottom line. Being a pioneer in delivering excellent customer support and improving customer experience can generate positive feedback as well as show how innovative and advanced you are as a successful business.
According to Gartner, 89% of companies expect to compete mostly based on customer experience.
As Mercedes Benz USA President and CEO Steve Cannon said, “Customer experience is the new marketing.”
Challenges Facing Contact Centers
Building and maintaining a world-class contact center is not an easy task. Between trying to deal with technical issues, dissatisfied customers, and budget cuts, it can be daunting. So, what are some of the main challenges facing contact centers today?
Keeping Up With Technological Advancements – the growth in new technology is driving the ongoing evolution of customer expectations.
Prolonged Wait Times – no one likes to be put on hold and wait endlessly for a customer support agent to finally show up.
Repetition of Concern – having to reexplain your concerns can get extremely frustrating.
First Call Resolution – multiple touchpoints for a resolution make it difficult for FCR to take place.
Dedicating time to solve these issues will drastically improve your contact center’s efficiency and productivity.
Top customer communication technology used in contact centers today:
1. AI Technology
Between 2018 and 2019, organizations that have deployed artificial intelligence (AI) grew from 4% to 14%, according to Gartner’s 2019 CIO Agenda survey.
The infusion of artificial intelligence in conversations has drastically improved agents’ efficiency. AI application assimilates information over time and formulates patterns that can be easily addressed. This helps the agent’s productivity by providing multiple solutions or responses to a customer’s complaint. Based on the situation, agents can either choose to follow the AI’s conclusion or disregard it.
AI technology is maturing by the day. Implementing such a powerful cost-saving tool will drive revenue to your business and help cut down heavy burdens on your agents.
2. Self Service Technology
Self-service technology has refashioned the face of customer service. In this day and age, customers try to answer their own questions with self-service first before ever having to call a support agent.
It’s important to realize the impact self-service has on increased revenue, customer acquisition, and support costs. Essentially, you are providing more services at less cost by allowing customers to rely on themselves to answer questions.
3. Interactive Voice Response Technology
IVR is an essential tool in modern call centers allowing customers to interact with a company’s host system via a telephone pad or by speech recognition. As an important feature in call centers, IVRs enable callers to select from a menu of automated prompts to be routed to the most relevant resource possible.
One important fact to consider is that customers dislike IVR systems. They particularly hate having to go through an endless series of prompts, wondering if they will ever solve their problem. Therefore, it is crucial to implement a seamless IVR design that is quick and easy to follow.
4. Co-Browsing Technology
Co-Browsing is a secure technology that allows a support agent to see what a customer sees on their screen, without downloads or installations. Being optimized for web and mobile, Co-Browsing enables an agent to click or scroll, highlight key information, and, therefore, quickly guide a customer to a solution.
Calculate your contact center cost savings using our Co-Browsing ROI calculator.
Co-Browsing is independent of all communication channels; It simply integrates with your existing methods of communication such as phones, chat sessions, or emails, thus providing personal support in real-time across multiple channels. Co-Browsing is a flexible visual engagement solution that offers an add-on benefit for customer support.
Final Thoughts
There are many tools designed to improve your contact center efficiency. In this day and age, new industry leaders are shifting faster than ever before. It’s time to get ahead of the game by introducing new and innovative software that will both enhance your customer experience and your contact center productivity.
