The contact center landscape is rapidly shifting due to innovative technology. Realigning the customer service experience has become a top priority for many businesses in 2021. With softphones and unified communications (UC) being one of the key driving factors of innovation in call center technology, let’s take a look at the trends and insights that can help us map out an omnichannel contact center strategy:
Call Center Trend #1: Digital Transformation
How do you make customer interactions better? It’s vital for businesses today to deliver a seamless customer experience from start to finish for their demanding, digital-savvy consumers. Digital transformation can help redefine the contact center service, improving communications – in short, opening up a world of new possibilities.
Contact centers on the cloud use the right channels to interact with customers, irrespective of location. For example, the smartest businesses (no matter what the size) are integrating advanced technologies across their workflows to provide full customer context within each interaction. They are also leveraging system data to provide proactive service which enables them to effectively resolve customer queries.
This highlights the importance of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) tools in supporting different workflows. Take for instance, team collaboration applications which have become strategically important for contact centers. One of the most important tools to influence the call center environment, unified omni channel communication tools help streamline business processes. They enable employees to collaborate better and empowers workforce mobility. Check out some other typical software requirements of modern call centers in this blog.
Also, there’s an increasing demand for customized UC solutions- applications with open APIs (Application Programming Interface) and Software development Kits (SDKs) can be leveraged to build an in-house solution that matches specific call center needs and helps deliver a seamless customer experience. By adopting these emerging digital transformation strategies, contact centers can gain a competitive edge and battle market threats more effectively.
Call Center Trend #2: Rising Adoption of Cloud Communications for Call Centers
Remote call center agents are a huge part of the contact center workforce today. A must-have alternative to traditional on-premise call centers, cloud communications have become integral for organizations looking to modernize their operations and add multiple communication channels to their workflows. This allows organizations to streamline team communications and build a collaborative culture. Cloud communications provide traditional office-based contact centers the flexibility to scale and expand to new locations by recruiting local talent without increasing overhead expenses.
As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Moving to the cloud isn’t a quick-fix solution that can happen all by once. By deploying a hybrid cloud solution, contact centers can gradually transition their operations into the cloud or even tailor the cloud architecture into a combination of multiple deployment models that fulfill their business needs. Instead of reinvesting in a complete overhaul, integrating a solution into your existing technology can be more cost-effective for your contact center.
Call Center Trend #3: Empowering Remote Call Center Agents with Advanced UC Tools
Decreasing overheads, time zone flexibility and mobile working are few of the factors that have encouraged the growing number of remote contact center workers.
With unified cloud communications technology constantly evolving as per contact centre trends, remote workers have become a permanent (and beneficial) part of the contact center environment. Collaboration tools facilitate contact center agents to work remotely, enable them to stay mobile and give them access to real-time analytics and customer context on the go.
Call Center Trend #4: Enhanced Analytics
It’s 2021 and we are finally saying goodbye to that restrictive dependence on supervisor skills! It’s time we use the digital tools at our disposal to get the most out of our contact center agents. Today, even SMBs are taking advantage of sophisticated analytics to convert data – like call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages and more – into insightful feedback for their agents. In this information age, it’s impossible to rely on just manual observation and monitoring.
More omni-channel call centers are opting heavily for advanced analytics programs to build dashboards with statistics that affect their businesses. There’s an increasing trend of this kind of display of statistical dashboards on user interfaces, so that call agents and managers can get real-time updates on customer experiences.
With consumer data becoming an asset, we expect more advancements in analytics as companies continue to implement more unified communications platforms and strategies.
Call Center Trend #5: Omni-Channel Call Center Communications
A must-have strategy for all contact centers gearing for the future of IoT, omni-channel platforms enable voice, video or chat communications via a single, universal solution that answers various call center needs such as queueing, skills-based routing or facilitating customer care. Not only does it provide extensive workforce optimization, but it also enables agents to provide a more personalized experience to customers.
Businesses must factor in the multiple touchpoints of a customer journey – that it may commence with one channel of communication but end with customer’s feedback on a completely different one. Leverage the benefits of UC by integrating all your customer communications across channels. Provide a better agent communication experience with valuable context to customer care and resolve issues faster.
If you are evaluating your next call centre phone systems or call centre telephone systems, consider a single, unified cloud offering, providing a complete set of real-time collaboration services that can help your agents become more flexible and productive, to ultimately provide a seamless customer experience.
Want to learn about latest call center technology trends and how to successfully implement them in your organization? Join our webinar "Softphones for the Call Center of the Future" and get to know how you can leverage powerful UC tools to increase agent productivity, improve analytics and enhance the customer experience:
