Top 5 Emerging Call Center Trends from Call Center Week

Attending industry shows like Call Center Week last month gives us a chance to catch up with our customers and ensure that we have our finger on the pulse of the contact center industry. We left Las Vegas abuzz with the top trends in call center technology – and a head full of great ideas for the TCN product roadmap.

Here are the top five trend takeaways every successful call center should have on their radars:

1. Competitive Analytics: Call Center Week had an entire track dedicated to business analytics, the phrase on everyone’s lips. With improved data insight and reporting, call center managers can improve efficiencies and ensure that agents are performing at peak productivity. Getting more from your data helps you know who needs more training, what times of day you can operate with less staff and even if switching agents from inbound to outbound (or vice versa) could increase efficiencies at peak hours. With advanced analytics and automated reporting, you can quickly and easily know what is – and isn’t – working and make adjustments as needed.

2. Employee Engagement: Improve the agent experience – from their daily work environment to their benefits – and you’ll transform your entire company. Studies show a direct correlation between employee engagement and customer service scores. Your employees are your most valuable assets, not just in the capital you invest in them, but in the return you get as well. So keep your call center agents happy and engaged, and the trickle down effect will pay off with happy customers, too.

3. Coaching: Effective training and coaching are vital to your call center’s success. Set your agents up for success and not only will their performance improve, customer engagement and satisfaction will rise as well (see item #2). Implement call center technology that enables managers to use actual customer interactions as learning opportunities for future growth. Keep coaching confidential, collaborate with agents when developing a game plan and keep the lines of communication open to ensure a successful outcome for all training opportunities.

4. Tools & Technology: Identifying and assessing the wide range of call center tools and technology available can be a full-time job these days. Luckily, cloud-based call center solutions that provide blended inbound and outbound capabilities, combined with business analytics, predictive dialer, manual dialing and other key features can streamline operations, empower your agents and boost productivity and efficiency across the board.

5. Multichannel: It’s vital that we reach our customers where they want to be contacted, whether that’s email, phone, chat or other website interactions. And in all of these interactions, ensuring that the customer has a seamless experience is critical. Technology that maintains a single customer record across all channels is taking the lead and empowering agents to be more efficient and provide better customer service. Keep in mind that no matter the channel, your agents should be properly trained on each and the technology should be working well to ensure an optimal customer experience.

The call center industry continues to evolve and grow, making it critical that managers stay abreast of the top trends. If you haven’t evaluated your existing technology in the past five years, now is the perfect time to take a closer look at cloud-based call center solutions.

For more information on the benefits of cloud-based technology for the modern call center, check out our Top 10 List When Considering a Cloud-Based Contact Center Solution whitepaper.