5 new trends in call centers
Since the start of the covid 19 pandemic, contact centers have seen strong trends towards a remote working model (in the long term, 50% of all agents would work from home) and at the same time an incredible boost in capacity required as well as a demand for service levels.
Companies are realizing that investing in their contact center could be the best way to differentiate themselves and give their brand a personal touch while maintaining cost efficiency. Of course, the best way to achieve this is by investing in the right technology. Here, we’ll try to give you a glimpse of where things could be headed for the contact center world in 2025 and beyond.
1. Full steam ahead on social media
We all used Facebook Live broadcasts at the beginning of the pandemic to stay connected with our friends. Today, nearly 60% of the planet is connected to some form of social network. This gives businesses a real opportunity to connect with their customers and offers a truly differentiated experience as a customer service channel. Finally, you can now have two-way conversations with your customers, respond to their complaints, and post proactive notifications, allowing your customers to reach you from wherever they are and with whatever message they want.
2. Voice bots are here to stay
Even though digital media is finding its way into the customer interaction space, there is still a clear customer preference for voice conversation (voice calls still account for 70% of all conversations by volume). But since, according to Google, 28% of the global online population uses voice to conduct mobile searches, talking to a bot of some kind (Siri or otherwise), we believe that traditional text-based chatbots will give way to intelligent voice bots or in other words, chatbots powered by speech recognition. This will start with “Welcome bots” which are the voice-activated evolution of the good old IVR and will continue with “Processing bots” capable of handling customer queries end-to-end. All this combined with predictive speech analytics to be able to identify customer service opportunities and deliver an enhanced experience.
3. Voice analysis and beyond
With today’s digital interaction, it’s fairly easy for a business to have a pretty good insight into its customer segmentation and collect data throughout the digital customer journey with a company. You can then leverage this data to determine customer patterns to better target your value proposition and improve your relationship with your customers. Contact center voice interaction has always been separate from this equation, but today, it can be integrated immediately. Artificial intelligence can help predict and learn from end-to-end customer data to track and personalize your ideal customer journey with the ultimate goal of strengthening brand loyalty.
4. End-to-end quality control
It’s no secret that only 1-3% of all calls in a conversation are actively listened to, recorded, and used for coaching. But with today’s machine learning, computers can be trained to determine whether a customer conversation has been handled correctly and recognize emotions embedded in language to determine the customer’s mood. This means that 100% of all contact center conversations can now be processed by machines, and their feedback can be used to understand a customer’s experience with a product or service and uncover weak links that cause negative customer reactions, with the ultimate goal of properly coaching the representative and improving customer relationships.
5. Gamification to make it fun
Even though robots (chatbots, voicebots, or process automation robots) largely help manage up to 30% of all customer interactions, humans remain the key factor in an exceptional customer experience. The new generation of agents (millennials) is used to spending a considerable portion of their time on various online gaming platforms. Therefore, bringing game logic to the contact center area can help you increase your agents’ motivation by more than 20% and reduce your churn by more than 30%. Gamification rewards good behavior, and overall, your customers can feel the difference, and your brand loyalty will be further enhanced.
6. Imagine tomorrow
No 21st-century business leader acknowledges that call centers must be at the heart of any organization’s customer service strategy. Businesses must recognize that investing in the right call center technology can help them thrive and differentiate themselves. More than 60% of support managers indicate their willingness to increase their spending on these new technologies in the coming year. You can still choose between social media presence, voicebots, advanced speech analytics, 100% quality control, or gamification, but the important thing is that you do everything possible to achieve the incredible digital transformation that will contribute to your business’s success.
Luc Jacobs
President of Nixxis
Visionary of the customer experience augmented by artificial intelligence, Luc Jacobs combines passion for innovation and strategic vision, propelling Nixxis to the rank of leader in the digital transformation of customer relations.
Luc Jacobs
President of Nixxis
Visionary of the customer experience augmented by artificial intelligence, Luc Jacobs combines passion for innovation and strategic vision, propelling Nixxis to the rank of leader in the digital transformation of customer relations.
