ChaseData Call Center Software Blog

Optimizing Call Centers for Today’s Communication Technology

Posted by Ahmed Macklai on Mar 13, 2019 7:30:00 AM

optimizing a call center

Are you looking for ways to bring your contact center into the modern day?

Do you feel like your facility looks like it was built two decades ago – and little has changed since then? Do you ever laugh at just how outdated some of your technological solutions are? How about your dialers, your call distribution software, your analytics – are they all up to date? If you answered no to any of these questions, then maybe it is time to think about how optimizing call centers for today’s technology might improve the way you do business.

There is more to optimizing a call center for today’s technology than simply adopting new methods of doing common tasks. Here, we outline some of the best ways for optimizing call centers for modern approaches and technology without compromising on the customer service principles that have made them successful in the first place.

Optimizing Call Centers for Today’s Technology Begins with Understanding that Technology

Communication is the backbone of contact centers. Optimizing call centers for modern approaches and technology begins with improving communications from the ground up. This includes everything from employing more efficient call routing techniques to improving the way conversations with consumers are handled. Everything is not only more streamlined, but more effective in meeting consumer needs.

This is the ultimate goal of any improvements made in call center communications technology. While improvements may make your agents’ jobs easier and your profit margins higher, it is ultimately all about serving the consumer better. Always look for technology that works toward this goal – and which fits within the bounds of what your center is already doing.

In general, the biggest trend you will see in the call center is the incorporation of techniques that are common in other industries. There are some tools and technologies that may not have previously seemed practical in the world of the contact center that are now making their way there and making life better and easier. Some of these include:

  • Live chat and chatbot functions
  • Remote employment
  • The implementation of full technology suites over standalone tools

optimizing a call center

Today’s Biggest Trends Deliver Logical Improvements

As we’ve mentioned, improvements should be made for more than just the sake of updating technology to say that your center has the latest edition of software or the newest, sleekest hardware available. The improvements should be logical, helpful ones that let your agents do their jobs better – and deliver better customer experiences to your consumers.

So, what are some of today’s hottest trends for the contact center? Here are just a few of the things that are making waves in the field of contact-based customer service:

  • Cloud communications as standard practice. There was a time when all communications were driven by on-site hardware. However, that time is rapidly becoming an idea from days gone by, as companies are increasingly relying on cloud-based communications for contact centers and many other business applications. Cloud-based operations have the benefit of being based offsite so that if something happens to the facility, operations can continue.

  • Increasing emphasis on self-service. Studies in recent years have shown that an ever-decreasing number of people actually want to speak to or directly interact with a live person when contacting a customer service line. More and more people are satisfied with interacting with a menu or prerecorded line, or happy with being able to meet their own needs with prerecorded prompts. Contact centers are catering to that changing dynamic by offering more and better self-service options all the time, including self-service menus that are interactive and pop up as alternatives to waiting for live agent interactions to become available. This saves time, money, and customer dissatisfaction.

  • Continuing integration of artificial intelligence into real interactions. Artificial intelligence is an important part of today’s call center operations. It is used for everything from answering consumer questions via chatbot applications to enriching live interactions between agents and callers with training or prompting. There are only going to be more applications of this valuable technology as time goes on, given its relatively low cost and high efficiency.

  • Call recording – specifically dual-channel recording – to improve customer service. Addressing specific issues that arose during previous calls can be difficult, even when calls are recorded. Recording them separately according to who is speaking on each line will help determine exactly what is being said and by whom and makes the analysis of this information easier and more accurate.

  • Remote call center agents as an increasingly-present part of the workforce. How many times have you heard someone mention that their ideal work situation involves working from home? That has become so common that today’s contact centers and other major employers are increasingly using remote agents as a major part of their workforce. By employing remote agents, they can quickly and easily scale their operations and create the size of employee base they need at any time – as well as keep costs under control!

  • Social media presence becoming commonplace across the industry. Social media presence is not something that a call center would have ever been concerned about a decade ago, despite business in other industries jumping on that bandwagon long ago. However, the modern business in nearly every sector knows that you can’t run a successful customer service operation without a social media presence, and that’s just as true for contact centers as it is for any other company.

  • Continuing improvement to analytics. Analytics has always been an important part of improving operations. Automating and therefore improving the way that your business gathers and processes information related to important metrics can only help overall operations at your facility.

There are numerous ways to optimize call centers for modern technology and improve your facility’s place in the modern marketplace. Nearly all of them can be found through the tools and technology available through ChaseData solutions. Talk to us today to find out more about how you can bring your center into the modern era of productivity and efficiency – and keep it there, year after year!

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Topics: Call Center Software