Incredibly Useful Call Center Technology Trend for Businesses

Blog: MattsenKumar Blog

All customer service centers have reported a dramatic increase in call volumes. The exponential rise in volume is an attribute of COVID-19. Centers catering to travel, hospitality, medical and e-commerce industries have registered an enormous influx. In 2021, call centers stand at a unique juncture; from here, it is either all gloomy or all jovial.

Call centers can bank upon the nascent opportunities by identifying the right call center technology trends and build robust processes around them. Failing to develop a futuristic center that caters to the growing needs of evolving customers will render numerous centers shut.

65% of customers talk to their friends and colleagues about their experience with customer support. If your center offers an exceptional experience, word of mouth will bring in more customers; if not, you are set to lose a good number of customers.

Identifying call center technology trends and teaching them as a culture at your customer service centers can work in your favor. These trends can help centers achieve a better ROI by offering instant access to the desired information when implemented correctly.

Call Center Technology Trends

The first outbound call in 1957 was entirely made to sell products; in 2021, over a million outbound calls are made daily. Not all of these calls are pushing customers to shell dollars; many of these are focused on creating awareness, informing users about the upcoming payment cycle.

This epicenter of quality customer experience also houses industry experts who sync with customers to ensure problem management. From answering questions to registering feedback and creating a conversational loop for effective CX management, centers are doing it all.

Call center technology trends will help centers understand the evolving mindset of end-users and offer them a solution that suits them the best. In addition, reliance on such trends will prepare centers to provide an exceptional customer experience.

Let’s have a look at the future call center technology trends:

1. Omnichannel Expertise

The advent of mobile applications has freed customers from the bondages of a desktop. Customers now shop conveniently at their preferred time from any place they desire. Similarly, customers, today want to be catered with quality support through numerous channels at different hours of the day. In addition, customers wish to raise requests through social media because it’s convenient and receive solutions through email.

E-commerce platforms have launched mobile applications, and it has made it easier for everyone involved to keep a tab on the queries raised. However, while a mobile application helps build a feedback loop, organizations functioning with a website can also implement it. MattsenKumar’s Omnichannel Framework offers a good understanding of the technicalities and provides a clear understanding.

While inbound contact centers must implement omnichannel expertise to offer first call resolution, outbound centers can leverage it to generate qualified leads with minimum effort. The graph here represents how Marketers generated 250% more engagement by involving more than two channels for advertisement.

2. Leverage Video Chat for Simplified Experience

COVID-19 outbreak forced banks, NBFCs, and Fintech to stop acquisition since they weren’t able to complete the KYC procedure in person. While many financial institutions continue to believe in meeting KYC requirements in person, some have decided to break the mold.

With the Video Chat KYC feature, both banks and Fintech startups offer customers an experience never heard of. With people spending time at home, they have identified the need to get their finances in line. With facilities that allow them to get their Financial Independence journey started from home comfort, people are excited.

ICICI Bank is a leading bank in India. Following the traditional model of in-person KYC, the bank has acquired millions of customers. Still, ever since the COVID outbreak, they offered a video KYC feature, which caught the attention of millennials.

Video KYC is a leading call center technology trend because it is limited to customer ID verification. However, it goes beyond savings account and is now being leveraged by banks to process loans by offering a proper understanding of underlying norms.

What makes ICICI’s video KYC a hit among the new and existing customers are features like:

Customers choose their preferred time slot
It takes less than120 seconds to get done with the process
Additional support is provided on call to help customers understand the product
Mutual Fund and Demat account requirements are being readily met

3. Cloud Infrastructure Helping Businesses go Asset Light

It was about time businesses ditched the grumpy ole way of maintaining servers and running processes from their extravagant offices. The stiffened competition had already coaxed organizations to look for ways to reduce expenditure and maximize ROI. With COVID-19, remote working has accelerated, and businesses have achieved targets they plan to cover with a five-year plan.

The cloud industry is growing with a CAGR of 22.3%. The drive was worth $50 Billion in 2020 and is likely to exceed the $138 Billion mark by 2025. Earlier, organizations offering cloud solutions had to put it as a beneficial opportunity for businesses; today, everyone is running behind it.

How adopting cloud infrastructure help a contact center?

Well, let’s go through all the benefits quickly:

It reduces dependence on maintaining extravagant workplaces
With CDNs centers located in one country can cater to a global audience
It reduces reliance on a physical server, promotes speed, and ensures safety
Managed by experts, round the clock assessments keep data safe
Allows organizations to let employees work from anywhere
Provides access to only authorized personnel by locking info with keys

Digital Contact Centers are on the rise, and it is perhaps one of the least discussed contact center technology trends. Digital contact centers rely on cloud applications to offer quality support services. One can bank upon these services to run effective contact centers without overspending on infrastructure and data safety.

4. Use Artificial Intelligence to Improve CES

One of the finest examples of Artificial Intelligence at play in contact centers is Axis Bank. With over 26 million customers, Axis is among one of the leading private sector banks from India. The user base of this bank is growing at a CAGR of 17%, which is enormous.

The bank has paved the road for quality customer experience by leveraging Artificial Intelligence. For example, when you dial the bank’s customer care, you are greeted by a virtual assistant, AXIS AHA, who takes “voice inputs” from you. Yes, a customer is not required to listen to the pre-defined menu and dial 1 for a credit card and 2 for a savings account.

A customer can directly speak “credit card” or “personal loan,” and the virtual assistant will redirect them to the desired menu. Implementation of Artificial Intelligence along with Virtual Assistant helps:

By reducing the average time spent by a user
It reduces the average delay of delay measurement
Offers exceptional experience by allowing customers to access info instantly

An Accenture study suggests, leveraging AI Is likely to increase business productivity by 35% by 2040 alone in the US.

5. Remote Tech Support

When the outsourcing industry went through a debacle during 2008-10, everyone wrote off the sector. In 2020, the industry continued to grow with a CAGR of 8%; by 2024, the industry will surpass a 12% growth rate.

Outsourcing has evolved itself and is perhaps a pioneer in adopting new technologies and paradigms. With the COVID outbreak, outsourcing organizations from India showcased great commitment and moved quickly to remote working. The swift movement was expected to come with a cost but no data breach, no compliance failure, and no drop in productivity.

Industry leaders have identified the COVID pandemic as an opportunity to:

Build remote tools to support compliance requirements
To develop community-level platforms to promote collaboration
Make tech-based solution common among the masses in India and the Philippines
To ensure all businesses can run efficiently while working remotely

How contact center technology trends like remote tech support help traditional outsourcing organizations:

It reduces dependence on extravagant workplaces
Ensures better compliance, which is often bound by time
Allows managers to forecast better and reduce the average delay of delay measurements
Allows organizations to achieve improved efficiency in all processes
Sets accountability and offers time to time opportunity to measure performance

6. Managed Security Services

Call center technology trends are helping organizations minimize dependence on physical workplaces and servers. While the move is excellent and offers incomparable growth opportunities but it comes with a few challenges.

The increased amount of cyber-attacks ever since the COVID outbreak is worrying, and businesses need to have a plan to tackle it. Managed security services is a viable option because:

It relies on a network of connected security operation centers to minimize attacks
Runs assessments incessantly to catch episodes in real-time
Protects against attempts of internal sabotages
Alerts all SOCs on the network as soon as a new threat is identified
It is highly affordable and offers industrial expertise
Ensures compliance at all levels

7. Social Media Platform to Service Customers

E-commerce and Fintech players are already leveraging Facebook & Twitter to offer customers quality support in real-time. With other industries like EdTech, Tele-communication, and Real Estate investing in social media, they can minimize AHT and offer FCR to all customers.

Here’s how using social media to service customers helps:

Free marketing because millions of customers can see how effective your response is
A new opportunity to retain customers by offering them quality support without making them go through several steps
Using social media as a part of omnichannel expertise to ensure quality support almost instantly without requiring customers to repeat their entire experience
Ensuring round the clock support irrespective of the location of customer or support agent

Final Thoughts on Call Center Technology Trends

Ever since COVID-19, call centers have played multiple roles. From working as the center of excellence to reducing risk and offering an innovative solution to bizarre challenges, outsourcing organizations have aced it all.

Contact centers have helped information starved customers with solutions instantly without making them wait. The centers have evolved in every instance. The new set of call center technology trends will likely push the centers through a plethora of changes.

Shortly, contact centers will be the critical differentiator; they will help customers distinguish between two brands. Organizations with little or no budget can consider outsourcing to players with a proven experience.

We at MattsenKumar have proved our mettle by fulfilling PCI DSS requirements for several successive years. In addition, our Clutch Leader tag year after year also displays our commitment to offering qualitative solutions to businesses of all sizes.

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