The rise of electronic self-service is changing the role the contact centre plays in customer sales and support, according to John Ziniades, CEO of self-service solutions company, Consology.
"South African companies and customers, like their counterparts around the world, are making more extensive use of cost-effective and convenient self-service channels such as the Web and Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and less use of more expensive channels such as branches and contact centres," says Ziniades.
"Right now, we are in the midst of a co-production revolution that is seeing customers become part of the enterprise's extended workforce. Companies are moving administrative tasks over to their customers, with the goal of deflecting routine calls such as bill enquiries away from their contact centres, to improve efficiency and reduce costs."
Ziniades says self-service doesn't threaten the existence of contact centres, but is redefining the role they play: "The contract centre increasingly exists to cater for complex query resolution, high-value customer interactions and to make outbound calls. SA call centres should position themselves at the forefront of these trends."
The call centre industry should be positioning itself to serve self-service customers as well as providing multi-channel services across channels such as instant messaging, the Web, and e-mail, in addition to telephonic support, he concludes.
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