Call centers have become an intrinsic part of many organizations. For many organizations, call centers work as a backbone. For decades, call centers are helping organizations to grow and flourish by giving them a variety of services. As the services became complex, we needed robust and reliable technology capable of catering a comprehensive service package for handling all types of customer-related operations.
So, What is Call Center Technology?
Our current ecosystem is highly dependent on call centers. Companies possessing the latest technology are becoming more powerful these days. Call center outsourcing technology is software and hardware infrastructure that is responsible for handling all the call center outsourcing operations. But, how can we evaluate whether the technology is really impactful or not?
The answer is simple. A good call center technology should be able to work cohesively with the person who is accessing it. For example, it could be a customer who is trying to process an order on the company’s website, the user interface of the website should be fast, user-friendly, informative, and aesthetically pleasing to the customer’s eyes. There should be a minimum number of bugs and hiccups on the website.
How did the call center service start?
Conventionally, companies handled their customers with all the queries and concerns related to their products or services. Over-the-call assistance was the only communication medium back then. In time, the customer base increased, then we looked for an individual call answering service. Call answering service became a necessity because handling customer complaints and queries demanded a lot of time and focus.
As time went by, we came across advanced phone system tools that helped all the customers to process certain operations that required least to no amount of agents’ intervention. For example, in VoIP and IVR; using these techniques customers were able to place orders, register a query, share ratings, and many functions which were initially carried out by agents.
For many years companies were using call answering services as the only method of communication. Then companies started manifesting other modes of communication such as online chats, emails, and messages. The objective of call center outsourcing companies has always been to help customers at best. It is a simple concept; more customer satisfaction equals better customer retention, conversion, and improved ROIs.
What are the latest technology trends at play in the call center business?
Artificial Intelligence
Undoubtedly, the most impactful and superficial in the call center business; artificial intelligence offers a plethora of applications such as conversational AI, sentiment analysis, and call routing. These applications are smart enough to understand the emotions of customers and they are equipped with smart algorithms that can administrate active measures to help customers with the best resolution for their problems and issues.
Omnichannel Communication Software
Currently, eminent companies are offering omnichannel communication channels for customers to ensure maximum proximity and accessibility to service. Now customers can switch between different communication channels and readily avail of support without having the need to explain the entire scenario from the beginning.
Every single detail of the customer is updated on the CRM, including the conversation details. The subsequent agent is able to quickly go through the conversation and be ready with the next plan of action.
Self-Service Channels
To save customers time and energy, many companies have introduced AI-powered self-help applications. These applications allow the users to avail of online support without having the need to interact with an on-premises customer support agent.
FAQ and AI-powered chatbots are a few examples of self-help tools that are capable of offering some basic functionalities for customers. These tools are built to cater to enough functions such as processing an order or making a transaction.
Analytics and Reporting
In the business world, data plays a pivotal role in gaining actionable insights. These insights are crucial during the decision-making process. Whether we are talking about website analytics or customer interaction reports, these data are quite intuitive as they capture the details of customer actions and helps us to manage our approach accordingly.
Especially interaction-based analytics software helps companies to assess the performances of the agents and key improvement areas; on the whole, these tools can improve the efficiency of call center outsourcing services drastically.
Assessing Customer’s Actions on Website
Tracking the customers’ actions on the website is one of the most impactful call center technologies. The agents are able to proactively view the customers’ journey on the web using a specialized tool. Having the knowledge of customers’ spending time on every webpage and their browsing patterns helps the agents to give more personalized support. The technique is colloquially known as screen mirroring and it can only be activated after proper authentication from the customer’s end.
Conclusion: Hence, these are a few top-notch call center technologies that are significantly improving the customer experience. Also, these call center technologies are helping companies to gain actionable insights like customer behavior, interaction reports, and website analytics. These insights can pinpoint the critical improvement areas and KPIs.