From Call Center To Contact Center — The Arrival of Customer Experience

Providing best and optimum customer experience is what all businesses strive for. It actuates and drives the performance of any organization. The widespread emergence of digital modes of communication and social connectivity has transformed how customers interact with the organizations.

Traditional methods of customer engagement like voice channels and calls are now quite redundant and do not offer a complete solution to customer query or problem. Digitally advanced modes of communication and strategies like chat, video call, social media outreach have taken over the old and traditional methodologies.

Also, studies have shown that call centers are changing their primary form and purpose. They have shifted towards delivering excellent customer service and engaging more customers rather than focusing blatantly on the number of calls and conversions. However, what brought this drastic change in the call center market and how is this change responsible for the emergence of better customer experience service?

Since the modes of communication kept increasing, customer demands and expectations also multiplied. Therefore, companies started coming up with digitally modified solutions to meet the exceeding demands of customers and keep them satisfied.

Let’s take a look at the new, improved call center ecosystem that is now being increasingly used by companies to modify their digital customer outreach:

Modern Call Center’s New Ecosystem Includes :

1. Dynamic FAQ’s

2. Intelligent live chat

3. Video call support

4. Co-browsing

5. Social Support Models

6. Mobile

The Journey Of Digital Strategy –

Call centers have modified the way they operate in the sense that now the focus lies more on delivering quality customer service instead of focusing only on sales. Customer engagement has become the prime concern for organizations, and they are coming up with different ways to achieve that. The new strategy for engaging more customers emphasizes the following key areas:

· More and more customer engagement: by offering “user-centric “and “user-friendly” experience.

· Focus on customer satisfaction

· Design and develop an appropriate channel for query resolving and feedback

Talking About The Disruptive Digital Forces

In today’s digitally progressive world, the rules of customer engagement are changing. Some disruptive forces play the role of a whirlwind in the marketplace; these are:

1. Rapid affirmation of technology- Both businesses and the customers are adopting technology at a rapid pace. Advancements in methodologies and increasing use of cloud computing, analytics, and social networking are responsible for causing both opportunities as well as risks for the customer experience of an organization.

2. Customer demands and expectations- There has been a drastic shift towards customer behavior and attitude. Customers demand greater transparency and corporate responsibility.

3. Increasing competition — Due to the emergence of new competitors every now and then, it is essential for organizations to develop new and advanced techniques to engage customers.

It is important to note how leading companies have evolved and modified their customer contact techniques and strategy. The focus here lies on how massively call centers have changed or how much they have evolved into strategic business units (SBU) that pay attention to customer engagement and retention.

It is imperative to note that technological advancements and modern approaches have made it possible for the call centers to gain a wide range of customers and retain them. Some of these advancements are as listed below:

1. Wide range of call center dialers — To deliver excellent user experience, call centers are deploying a variety of dialers. They work on a statistical algorithm and predict the accurate time when the customer is available to take the call. Some examples of call center dialers that are used widely to increase chances of conversion are :

· Predictive dialer: It is based on a statistical algorithm; it is an automated telephone calling system that increases the number of live connections exponentially, thereby reducing the wait time and increasing the talk time.

· Autodialer: It is an automated calling system that includes features like voice broadcasting / robocalling and interactive voice response.

· Power dialer: It is an automated dialing system that focusses on manually -configured calls-to-agent ratio.

· Preview dialer: It is a dialer that gives the agent the flexibility to review the clients before dialing to maximize customer engagement. It uses parameters such as list priority and ratios.

2. Call center solutions- Since we are living in the cloud age, several innovations and improvements have given a new dimension to customer interaction and experience. Therefore, to deliver excellent customer service, organizations use cloud-based solutions like — inbound call center, outbound call center, virtual and blended call center, each coming with various unique features and benefits.

3. VoIP Solutions — Conventional and traditional ways of communication are not capable of delivering active customer service. VoIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol which provides the flexibility of making or receiving phone calls over the internet. Thus, it is a scalable, cheaper, and logically an efficient way to connect with customers on call.

4. Business Numbers — Any business is sustainable only when there is constant communication with the customers. Therefore, this communication should be made easier and more accessible so that customers can easily connect with a business. So, the whole concept of business numbers is to minimize the communication gap between the organization and the customer and create a proper gateway for two-way communication. Business numbers can be of two types, virtual numbers, and toll-free numbers.

Thus, there has been a remarkable change in the functionality of call centers. From existing as solution advisory units to functioning as a business generating units, call centers have emerged as an independent working industry. Call centers as an industry have set a benchmark for fantastic customer service and engagement. Moreover, with new advancements and technological progressions, customer engagement is likely to increase manifolds in the coming years.