Martin Dove, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Merchants, Dimension Data's contact centre and business process outsourcing (BPO) business, shares some insights about where the industry is heading.
1. Reducing risk and increasing flexibility
The way organisations are looking at the contact centre, customer service, and sourcing services is changing. Cost used to be the only driver, but although half of contact centre businesses still classify themselves as “cost centres”, there is an increasing focus on risk management and flexibility.
This is according to Dimension Data and Merchants' latest benchmarking report, the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2011. Customer loss due to bad service and increased expectations is rising, and therefore becoming a rising concern.
2. The coming of the cloud
The biggest influence to contact centre evolution over the next few years is going to be the impact of cloud computing. This growing method of procuring technology is starting to affect both in-house contact centres and BPO operators.
During the 2000s, the industry was exposed to and started using channels other than voice - such as Web-chat, e-mail and SMS. The contact centre of the 2010s now sees voice increasingly playing a supporting role to other channels. For instance, users are more prone to first visit the Web site of a company they are planning to engage with before picking up the phone and making a call to the contact centre.
The 2010s has seen the emergence of what is called the “multi-channel” contact centre. Many companies are struggling to effectively deliver multi-channel communication services to clients and are increasingly looking to the cloud to increase agility and flexibility when introducing new services. This is easier than building on existing infrastructure, which will only increase complexity.
3. The multi-channel contact centre
The last 10 years has seen a dramatic move away from face-to-face interactions. In the 1990s, about 90% of non face-to-face business interactions were handled by human agents. During the same period, some e-mail was already being used, but its availability wasn't widespread and interactive voice recognition (IVR) software was at its early development stages.
Then in the 2000s, human agent contact reduced to about 65% of the total non face-to-face interactions. This was during a time when interaction volumes overall were increasing exponentially. Users now began having more choice in interaction methods - such as the Internet, which grew to become a viable communication option.
In the 2010s, only 33% of non face-to-face interaction is handled by agents. Social media and the different modes of communication that it has sparked is a big influencer. Challenges still exist around the user experience, however, as companies struggle to come to grips with the management of the multi-channel contact centre. Companies need to work on ensuring that the users' experience remains the same throughout, despite the user's chosen method of communication.
4. Insight and the customer experience
An increase in communication channels means customer experience is changing and companies are forced to extend the process that impacts customers into other areas of the of the organisation. Contact centre agents can no longer get away with saying: "That is not my department." Customers are expecting a single point of entry into an organisation and companies may lose competitive advantage if they cannot satisfy this. Organisations need to increase customer insight to discover what drives customer experience - they have to understand what metrics and measurements are available, and use them. Measuring customer experience used to be as simple as relaying the question: "Are you happy with the service you are receiving/have received?" However, this simple metric is no longer adequate.
Measuring “Net Promoter Score” can give contact centres more reliable results. This metric seeks to answer the question of: "Would you recommend us to your family/friends based on the service you have received?"
Gauging “Customer Effort Score” through investigating how easy it was for the customer to have their query answered, is another insightful customer experience measurement.
5. Changing business models
Organisations are clear as to what they dislike about the current business models available to them when procuring technology services, such as the rigidity that comes with most service contracts, the high cost of doing business, etc. They are becoming more clear about the business model they desire, but not how to achieve it. This is largely due to the investments that companies have made over the last 10-15 years - it is impossible to simply dissolve set processes and change long-existing technological architectures without having a clear roadmap in place.
Share
Editorial contacts