Four Emerging Call Center Trends for 2015
Anticipating emerging trends in the industry is key to determining which new technologies are worth integrating into your call center setup. Every year business analysts conduct surveys to home in on what’s up and coming.
Last year, speech analytics was predicted to be one of the more important trends that would make a big impact. This year, we have four new trends industry experts predict will play a substantial role in changing the face of call centers in the the year ahead.
1. Unified Communication
The global unified communication market is expected to reach $75.81 billion by 2020, and that may just be the beginning. In 2015, cloud-based technology will continue to offer contact centers the ability to present callers with a completely seamless experience. Hosted, cloud-based call center solutions are:
- Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks
- Assisting team leaders in ensuring that collaboration outpaces escalation
- Combining voice, video, and other consumer-popular interactions
TCN’s Agent Gateway connection options and interface features enable call centers to utilize unified communication strategies to the fullest.
2. Tool Consolidation
One of the biggest trends in contact center operations will continue to be consolidation of process and toolsets. The switch from on-premise solutions to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has been steady for the last five years, in large part due to the fact that organizations can streamline operations and access all of their tools in one place.
Companies that offer complete software solutions for both inbound and outbound traffic, like TCN’s True Blended system, will continue to organize information from multiple data inputs to turn people from employees to powerhouses by giving them access to the tools and data they need to do their job successfully in a single location.
3. Mobile Growth
In a recent Pew survey, 46 percent of those polled claimed they “couldn’t live without” their smartphone. By this point, it’s old news that smartphones are here to stay and have radically altered the way that people interact on all levels, including customer support interactions.
This is exactly why improvements in device-based identification and verification (ID&V) documents interactions are cutting call times and connecting callers with what — and who — they need faster than ever before.
4. Gamification
Competition is a great tool to help drive team members to achieve greater results. This is exactly why gamification has come to the forefront in a big way. And it has been estimated that as of this year, 40 percent of Global 1000 organizations are using gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations.
So what is gamification? Simply put, gamification applies the same principles that game designers use to make apps like Candy Crush so addictive to workplace processes to maximize employee engagement and performance.
By connecting with employees’ basic desire to win, gamification allows enterprises to forge a strong connection between individual satisfaction and company goals. And because gamification is so data-driven, it’s easy to identify where improvements can be made in processes and workflows.
So whether your organization is looking to improve agent performance, increase the ability to service customers on their preferred platform or consolidate the tools used to perform day-to-day tasks, the switch to a SaaS model for contact centers is your best bet for staying ahead of trends while keeping costs low.
And with increased efficiency comes the chance to grow business, an opportunity that relies on the ability to scale up or down as-needed based on real-time business conditions. This is just yet another reason why hosted contact center solutions are becoming a no-brainer for companies of all sizes.