Future Of The Call Centre: The Right Mix Of Agent Support And Innovative Technology

Posted by Taniya arya

Artificial intelligence, cloud-driven platforms, augmented reality and other technology advancements have revolutionised the way call centres function, drive intelligence and add values to improve the customer experience. Very soon, most of the customer service will be automated and end-users will actually love it that way. Considering these facts, it is no doubt that the call centre industry will undergo a paradigm shift in the coming years.

With customer experience on every business evangelist’s lips, the contact centre industry is about to undergo a metamorphosis from IVR-only mode to fully automated mode. The technology that exists today will take a large step toward a fully-automated call centre. More importantly, this shift to bring convenience for customers will ensure that they prefer self-service over live agent interactions. As call centre reps look ahead to the future, there is an opportunity to leverage the call centre agent as a highly-skilled mentor working parallel with the technology. So, the right amalgamation of customer care rep support and technology can make future-ready call centre, delivering an exceptional customer experience that customers will enjoy.

In the vision of the future contact centre, call centre reps and callers will spend most of the time with machines rather than interacting with each other. Though it’s easy to predict the world where there’s a technology-driven learning loop, it is very hard to imagine an environment that consumers will prefer it.

In today’s fast-paced world, when the consumer prefers to call, they have definitely figured out some problem in other communication channels, such as not being able to get the solution to their questions online. Lack of an agent’s expertise can be the reason for this deficiency. Callers always have a hard time locating this specific information on the website and point toward the answer. Well, this problem will no longer exist in future because this interaction will create a feedback loop that enables contact centre machine to automatically see what’s missing and provide the appropriate answer.

Read Also: What is the Difference between Contact Centre and Call Centre

From a customer care agent’s perspective, this feedback loop alone acts as an ideal contact centre that saves both time and money. However, the more challenging part of making future-ready contact centre is the part when consumers will prefer it. Right now, it is difficult to believe that users wanting to talk to a machine rather than a human being. But, think about using an ATM machine instead of visiting a bank teller for a transaction. End-users will definitely prefer interacting with machines when it’s more convenient and easily accessible.

So, how do today’s call centre agents ensure they are on the right track? How do they make things convenient for end-users while saving the business cost? A solution that contains the answer of both questions is taking the step in the right direction.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook recently said that “I don’t know anyone who prefers calling businesses. It’s not a fast and convenient way, and it definitely doesn’t feel like the future.”

For the call centre that aims to offer future-ready call centre outsourcing services, it must rely on intelligent automation.

Given below are the few takeaways to construct future-ready contact centres.

Meet the customer where they are (Go mobile): As smartphone adoption rate is increasing at the fast pace across the globe, the call centre can take the advantage of the fact that users can look at a smartphone screen while they are interacting with an agent or navigating an IVR system.

Add context with human intervention: This is yet another great opportunity which involves leveraging call centre agents to help the technology that answers customer queries. For instance, whether a customer sends an IM or calls in, the technology trying to resolve a customer issue or connect the customer to the right person will always have edges. Herein, edges indicate the extent where customers start being annoying. Technology today comprised of live agent support that assists these front-end applications in real-time to deliver excellent customer experience.

Anticipate customer needs: Indubitably, the most exciting opportunity is to anticipate customer needs. Many vendors that offer call centre outsourcing services say they don’t have data, budget to anticipate the customer needs. However, with just 3 or 4 data points, one can make excellent predictions.

This is true that we are not at the place where the support agent is the real gamer and teaching the technology in real-time, but that day isn’t far away. We can take a big leap in bringing the best of the agent support and machine together to build future-ready contact centre.

Tags: Call centre outsourcing services