Digital technology has influenced customer service more than any other area of business operation. The Digital revolution has transformed the way customer service has been delivered through contact centres over the past two decades. Businesses are adapting to changing communication preferences and are delivering services the way customers want it.

Today, customers have greater expectations than before. And so, personalized and timely customer support through all digital channels has become a necessity. Siloed, limited-channel call centres will be a thing of the past. Contact centre outsourcing services of the future will be through seamless, omnichannel customer interaction hubs.

Digital Transformation is Key

The transformation of the contact centre is a determinant of an organization’s digital transformation. In fact, it shows the organization’s ability to concurrently deliver the often competing objectives of customer experience and cost. Digital transformation has helped contact centres to evolve. From a reactive service centre resolving customer queries, contact centres have moved to function an interaction hub. They use analytics to provide proactive, personalized support, and powerful customer service solutions. Analytics plays an important role in transforming the contact centre experience.

Omnichannel Contact Centres

An omnichannel contact centre analyses and works on a huge amount of customer data received from social media, email, SMS/MMS, IVR, voice calls, mobile, and other touchpoints from a single console. An omnichannel approach treats all modes of communication in the same manner. Deep analysis of customer behavior will help contact centre outsourcing services to offer personalized, real-time support to customers in a short span of time. The number of customers using alternative communication channels like web chat, email, and social media, is rising continuously. Consequently, the positive shift from conventional call centres to omnichannel contact centres will also continue to increase in future. There’s no doubt that omnichannel contact centres are capable of achieving higher customer satisfaction and loyalty which will eventually get translated into increased revenue and customer lifetime value. 

Technological Advancements For Digital Transformation

Innovative technologies like Robotic Process Automation, AI, and Machine Learning are changing the face of contact centres. Contact centres are widely incorporating software bots to automate repetitive processes. Interactive Voice Response (IVR), which is one of the earliest call centre automation trends has now evolved with the integration of Artificial Intelligence. Advanced IVR systems use speech recognition with which call centres will be able to easily route calls to appropriate agents or departments. These systems can resolve issues by interacting with customers through a natural language audio interface. AI-enabled IVR systems can derive relevant information from previous customer interactions to deliver personalized experiences. With the incorporation of Machine Learning into chatbots and IVR systems, common customer queries get deflected through quick, efficient, and accurate low-cost digital channels.

Analytics

Analytics will help the contact centres to sort out the most common questions received, this information will help in routing such queries to the right channels quickly and efficiently.

Cloud-based flexibility and agility

Also, cloud-based contact centre platforms will enable remote call centre agents to work in the same way as in location-based centres. This makes it easier for organizations to hire the best talents regardless of their location. Cloud-based contact centres offer flexibility and agility to serve more customers and cut down costs spent on infrastructure and IT.  

IoT

Contact centre outsourcing services of the future will be using the potential of the Internet Of Things (IoT) to transform their customer service solutions. For instance, with the incorporation of IoT, a faulty device can automatically send a report or notification to the customer service centre without troubling the user.  The technical support agents will then make a call to the customer offering their assistance. 

Automation

Automation with techniques like RPA streamlines the business processes. RPA automates the rule-based, repetitive tasks in contact centres. This improves the experience of both customers and inbound call centre agents. Present-day contact centres are cultivating a culture of customer engagement. They train agents to use new digital channels for solving customer issues. Contact centres are adopting new methods like monitoring customer churn rates, abandon rates, satisfaction scores, and customer lifetime value. This way, they can measure the success of a customer engagement strategy.

Customer-centric approach

Contact centres have become a competitive necessity for many organizations as it plays a major role in customer retention. Both SMEs and established businesses are now approaching contact centre outsourcing service providers to improve their customer service. Customer experience across both digital and non-digital channels determines the success of any organization. 

Three Elements in CX

Three main elements will be used by future contact centres to improve the customer experience. The first one is Data, spread across a multitude of systems and applications which provides insights about the customer experience. The analysis of customer data will help contact centres to take effective measures to improve the customer journey. It increases brand loyalty and customer retention.

This brings us to the next element — contact centre agents play a major role in creating meaningful customer interactions. Agents, whether digital or human, are entrusted to engage with the most precious resource of an organization — the customers.

The third element would be the communication channel. The communication channel is also an important element which affects the customer experience and employee productivity. An integrated omnichannel experience optimizes the organization’s workforce and delivers a fluid experience to the customers. It offers self-service and assisted care, along with analysis of the previous customer interaction, to create highly personalized customer engagements.

Customer experience as a brand differentiator

Going forward, organizations will emphasise more on improving their customer experience as a brand differentiator rather than as a support function. There’s no doubt that agents play a vital role in carrying out contact centre operations. Companies are exploring technology integrations to make their operations more efficient.

Technologies like AI and RPA are still being developed and implemented. Meanwhile, sophisticated cloud-based offerings such as CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service) bring an added level of advantage to traditional contact centres. Such cutting edge technologies boost productivity and cost benefits. 

A decentralized and largely distributed team of home-based agents will make up future contact centres. They will be mostly digital-savvy, social media experts who are able to deliver excellent customer support solutions. We are talking about a huge cost-saving potential. It will also improve the quality of call centre agents. Implementation of innovative technologies like RPA, AI and IoT in contact centres will take pre-emptive customer service to the next level. 2020 is a watershed for contact centre outsourcing service providers — transformative changes in technology, people and processes will influence the way service is delivered.