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“Contact centers need to factor in changes on two fronts: New consumer privacy protection regulations are coming into being, and call costs are coming down.”
That’s from Spescom company officials, who add that what these two seemingly divergent factors have in common is that “they make it important that business risk is mitigated and that governance and compliance requirements are being met within the business.”
Spescom DataVoice
offers some insight, says Kgabo Badimo, MD of Spescom DataVoice, a South African company that develops proprietary products for the contact center and enterprise telephony market. “At present, a large portion of contact centers’ revenues come from direct sales. New privacy laws mean that contact centers will come under greater scrutiny in terms of their interactions with customers, the legitimacy of the data they use and how they use and store that data.”
Interactions with customers “need to be recorded to ensure business risk is mitigated and legislative compliance requirements are met,” Badimo said. “Access to recordings will provide assistance if contact centers are challenged by consumers in terms of overstepping privacy laws or even with regard to transactions concluded. With regard to winning new international business, the ability of the contact center to meet international standards – including risk, security and legal requirements — will affect its competitive positioning and chances of success.”
Individual technologies, like voice recording solutions, are “largely commoditized and easily accessible,” Badimo said. “The real challenge is to create a holistic integrated offering that meets business requirements at an enterprise level.”
A workforce optimization product will monitor the performance of agents, enabling ongoing assessment, Badimo says. “But if call recordings can be integrated to the workforce optimization, enabling assessment of the agent’s actual interactions with customers rather than just the call statistics (volumes and query resolutions or sales), then a clearer view of agent performance can be seen.”
A purpose-built infrastructure can ensure contact centers operate more efficiently, agents are better trained and more productive and effective, service quality is enhanced, client and organisational risk is mitigated and compliance and governance requirements are met.
Says Badimo: “South Africa’s contact centers are, by and large, world-class.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by
Juliana Kenny
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