Call Center Management Featured Article
The Traditional Call Center is Dead and Gone
Think about how many times you have called a contact center, and by that we mean the number for technical support that you dial every time there is a problem with any product or service that you’ve purchased – which can range from a smartphone, automobile, dishwasher or VoIP provider. Whether you realize it or not, you have likely called a contact center more than a dozen times throughout your life. However, with communication platforms rapidly expanding, users might not have to pick up the phone anymore, rather they can turn to the Web or favorite social media feed.
In a white paper from Intelliresponse, titled “Death of the Contact Center”, it is observed that today’s customers are increasingly using web, social and mobile channels as their ‘first contact point’ with businesses. Now, organizations need to focus on getting their online self-service features to be an effective, one-stop shop location for users searching the Web for an answer, as opposed to calling a contact center, which are being replaced by virtual agents.
The white paper defines virtual agents as software services that engage in automated conversations with customers online. They excel in delivering accurate answers to low-complexity questions, thereby reducing call and email volumes by as much as 50 percent.
“A virtual agent can instantly deliver the one right answer to simple questions in an automated fashion, eliminating the need for human interaction for frequently-asked, low-complexity questions that typically flood contact centers,” according to Intelliresponse.
As evidence, consider the data from when customers began heading online en mass, in 2011:
- 24 percent of consumers reported using an online virtual agent
- 25 percent of consumers reported using online screen-sharing
- 27 percent of consumers reported using the click-to-call feature from a company website
That was back in 2011, right before the mobile revolution kicked off, and looking back it seems that it was light years ago, rather than just two short years. Now, thanks to VoIP and cloud-based services, the “virtual” trend has also begun to kick-off
About 60 percent of customer questions are general, or informational questions, which do not require human assistance. Since most users now turn to the company website first before calling a contact center, what organizations need to focus on is making sure that the answers are easy to find online.
When customers are able to find answers to general questions on your website on their own via a virtual agent, calls to the contact center are reserved for those cases where questions are more complex and legitimately require human assistance.
Although contact centers are not completely extinct, the Web, combined with virtual software, has begun to lessen the amount of calls they receive a day, leaving room for those that require the most attention and assistance to be properly handled.
Edited by Blaise McNamee