Call Center Management Featured Article
Can WebRTC Improve Outcomes for Call Center Management?
The typical call center interaction once required nothing more than the telephone and the right number to reach customer service. You may have needed to navigate your way through the menu to reach the right person, but once you had the agent on the phone, you could typically complete the necessary steps to accomplish your goals. Call center management designed workloads around this concept and all was good.
Fast forward to a world where interactions through text messaging and social media can achieve the same results in the contact center and a whole new focus on guidelines must be established by call center management to ensure the optimal customer engagement experience. Multiple channels are available and agents with varying skills must be available to properly manage interactions. Is it the end of the line or are bigger and better channels on the way?
Web chat has been readily adopted by a number of companies who want to make the consumer experience easier and ensure those who are merely browsing around the website become consumers. At the same time, there’s an opportunity to take these interactions a step further and introduce video without the need for compatible plugins or software downloads. According to this piece from Orange Business Services (News - Alert), the best is yet to come.
WebRTC was originally developed and introduced by Google as a means to leverage real-time communications in browser-based environments. The open source project needed standardization and further development and thus was adopted by the W3C (News - Alert). Now, WebRTC 1.0, released in February of 2015, enables browser-to-browser applications for video chat, voice calling and even file sharing. WebRTC-compliant solutions are in development.
For call center management, WebRTC opens up a world of possibilities, including the ability to share rich image and video apps directly within mobile or tablet browsers. Given that an increasing number of consumers are using their mobile devices to interact with call centers today to complete transactions, this step is critical. At the same time, file sharing is possible without a software client, streamlining the opportunity to get to the heart of the problem and keep everyone on the same page – literally.
What does this mean for real world implications in the call center? Take Amazon, for example. By enabling WebRTC support in its devices, consumers can connect with customer service representatives within 10 seconds at the touch of a virtual button; healthcare providers are enabling patients to get in touch with healthcare professionals faster; IT support can gain a visual on problems and more easily support solutions as they no longer need to rely on customer descriptions.
For the first time, call center management can design interaction support based on real-time interactions with a visual component that is streamlined. This allows for a more customized approach to customer care to ensure optimal outcomes. The phone is no longer required to place the call and real-time solutions are delivered seamlessly.