Contact centres are not dying; rather, they are transforming. Generation Y is providing early insights into how contact centres will need to adapt, as the telephone has become the fourth most popular communication channel of choice.
These are some of the biggest findings of the "Dimension Data 2013/14 Global Contact Centre Benchmark Report", which reveals that the continued dominance of voice is over.
Presenting some of the key findings of the report, Andrew McNair, head of global benchmarking at Dimension Data, said this is a reality that organisations have to plan for and accommodate.
"Organisations have to quickly develop their contact centre operating models to handle more complex enquiries across a variety of channels," said McNair.
However, he pointed out that while the phone-focused contact centre may have lost its monopoly, the phone will remain an important support function for all other channels, as well as for the omni-channel customer experience.
"The telephone is becoming the channel of last resort. If all else fails, customers then call customer services," said McNair.
Also speaking during the event, Darren Arnold, managing executive for contact centre solutions (MEA) at Dimension Data, said the traditional telephone is now the fourth channel choice for Generation Y - behind electronic messaging, social media and smartphones.
"This trend signals the future shape of customer management. Our results highlight just how little organisations know about customers through digital channel interaction and how infrequently organisations ask them about their experiences," Arnold said.
Plans for managing non-voice channels are surging, he noted, adding that smartphone application deployments are scheduled by 34.9% of organisations.
Another trend that emerged from the study was that Web chat has become the top channel priority for 50.6% of contact centres, and the number of deployments that are planned has increased 27.2% over the past 12 months.
"The question is, will Web chat - notwithstanding its potential to integrate with social media - provide consumers and organisations alike with the call-avoidance solution they've been demanding?" asked McNair.
"Over the next two years, and as predicted in our 2012 report, Web chat deployments will grow substantially. People are becoming more comfortable with self-help, self-care and self-service," McNair said. As multichannel self-help solutions become more effective, there's less need for human-to-human interaction, he added.
"If you follow this to its logical conclusion, the only time customers will want to make direct contact with an organisation is when something's gone wrong and they've exhausted other real-time options to resolve it.
"Establishing a channel presence is one thing; it's a completely different challenge to match channels to user preferences and to develop systems that encourage users towards these lower-cost, self- or assisted-help channels."
For Arnold, it's encouraging that almost three-quarters of companies recognise customer care and the contact centre as being a competitive differentiator. At the same time, organisations need to change their form and more than a 10th (12.2%) have seen fit to employ a dedicated resource to focus on innovation and facilitate their development programmes.
He also explained that new global markets and growing populations are creating an ever-increasing demand for products and services. "Add to this the proliferation of smart devices and mobile applications, and it's not difficult to see a new world emerging in a more dramatic way than we've seen over the last 20 to 25 years."
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