Contact centres failing to understand the communications needs of their customers and put appropriate channels in place are losing ground to more flexible rivals.
This is according to Karl Reed, sales and marketing director of telephony vendor Elingo, who notes that the age of the one-way communication street - where brands controlled the manner in which their customers communicated with them - has passed.
“Today's customers want to communicate using a channel that suits them, and that could be Facebook, Twitter, Skype, video calls, SMS, e-mail, fax or regular phone calls, depending on the demographic profile of the customer,” says Reed.
Reed points out that technology exists to cater to any type of customer interaction, but choosing which mediums to use, and how to use them, requires strong strategic and operational skills.
He explains that it is particularly important to ensure that once a new channel is introduced, it is effectively managed.
“Opening a Facebook channel is relatively simple, but managing what happens within that channel once customers start using it can turn out to be very complex.
“In the shift to multi-channel contact centres, brands without a detailed understanding of their consumers' behaviour patterns could get caught out, as could those without the necessary skills in place to support the opening of new channels,” he notes.
Platform integration
According to Araceli Aranda, CEO of Presence Technology, by integrating new platforms into the existing contact centre solution, organisations can manage the new channels through one centralised tool with minimal infrastructure requirements.
By integrating social media into the contact centre, Aranda adds, organisations gain the ability to interact in a more instant and flexible way than ever before.
“If organisations want to engage with 2.0 customers, generation C - digital natives and exceptionally tech-savvy people - they have to reach their customers by interacting with them via the channels they prefer to use. Companies who actually care for their customers can't afford to miss this train.”
Says Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion: “By integrating social media into the contact centre, organisations can not only better service their customers but also gain an important competitive advantage by being able to respond to praise or complaints quickly and easily.”
Reed believes hosted solutions have the potential to cut capital costs and the resource demands associated with communication infrastructure.
However, he stresses that South African companies will need to tread cautiously if they are to ensure that a move to the cloud doesn't open up an unexpected set of issues.
“An important concern is understanding the implications of shifting an infrastructure that was previously under full in-house control to an off-site set-up that involves additional parties and business partners.
“Such a decision needs to be carefully assessed if it's going to actually add value to the organisation. Security is the oft-cited issue here, but actually it's the lack of centralised control that could prove to be the sticking point for many organisations.”
Operational shocks
In addition, Reed says, important infrastructure considerations must be factored in. “In 2010, SA experienced repeated Internet outages. A company 100% 'on the cloud' could face some nasty operational shocks were these kinds of outages could occur in the future.”
According to Reed, more and more organisations are also exploring how they can use their contact centre infrastructure to service multiple business areas.
“Whether a holding company is operating several distinct businesses or a single company is running different divisions, utilising a single piece of technology across the full business structure can deliver immediate cost benefits,” he stresses.
It is also Reed's view that the transcontinental fibre-optic cables are coming online with increasing frequency, which means that in theory SA should be enjoying rapidly falling bandwidth costs and much improved line quality.
The reality, however, is that savings are not being passed down the line fast enough by telecoms operators, he notes.
“As a result, bandwidth remains the country's number one business development killer. While other economies are operating in a virtually unlimited bandwidth context, currently we can only dream of the possibilities that would open up if local businesses had access to unlimited bandwidth.”
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