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Call Centers Are Feeling the Burn

By TMCnet Staff

To no one’s surprise, a recent study found that contact centers are playing a growing role in business strategy. But more importantly, it was also uncovered that “CIOs will have to work more closely with business partners to integrate a proliferation of customer engagement channels and disparate IT systems.”

That’s the word from The Wall Street Journal, which took a deep dive into research giant Deloitte’s (News - Alert) 2015 Global Contact Center Survey.

“Nearly all survey respondents -- 96 percent -- said their contact center functions were expanding, according to the survey of 300 businesses on five continents,” the Journal said. Business growth and customer experience demands were the two leading factors for that expansion, but they were far from the only ones. Still, the growth was worth highlighting.

“In 2013—the first year the survey was conducted—62 percent of respondents said customer experience as delivered through the contact center was a competitive differentiator; this year, that figure rose to 85 percent,” the Deloitte findings showed.

Andy Haas, director and customer operations practice leader with Deloitte, added to the input by noting a change in reporting structures. For example, in 2013, a mere 37 percent of respondents said their contact centers reported to a single department. That number today stands at a strong 74 percent. That’s a big jump,” Haas told the Journal. “Holding a singular leader responsible for contact center performance signifies its importance to the organization.”

There were other numbers cited by the survey as well. Respondents see growth occurring across all contact center channels, mostly for simple inquiries. That growth is expected to come via the Web (83 percent); via email (80 percent) and by mobile (77 percent). For complex inquiries, the numbers shift slightly to voice (68 percent), Web chat (55 percent), and email (53 percent).

Looking ahead, software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) solutions will likely be the technology strategy of choice for contact centers. “Respondents were most likely to have SaaS CRM today, while they expected to see the biggest increase in SaaS options for workforce management, social, and mobile over the next two years,” the Journal noted. And Deloitte’s Haas chimed in as well, observing that cloud-based systems could fuel further integration issues. “Cloud offerings make it easy for the business to deploy a system quickly without IT involvement,” Haas said. “Suddenly you wake up and have 50 different solutions supporting customer engagement.”

A chart showing Deloitte’s Top Ten insights can be accessed HERE.