Newsletters

Customer Support:   (972) 395-3225

Home

Articles, News, Announcements - click Main News Page
Previous Story       Next Story
    
Smart Techniques For Call Center Transformation

by Jim Machi, Vice President Product Management, Dialogic - April 1, 2013

Smart Techniques For Call Center Transformation

 By Jim Machi

In the beginning, call center transformation was spurred by cost consciousness and enabling technology. Today, the customer serves as an additional catalyst for transition in the contact center. Modern consumers no longer expect – or want – to interact with agents to take care of routine matters. If call center leaders are to continue meeting their budget mandates while also increasing customer satisfaction, they must deliver self-service, automated menus. However, that is only the first step. To truly transform operations, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience, call centers need to follow several critical best practices.

Guard against downtime
From the moment an enterprise begins planning its call center transformation, it must focus on availability. This means that the transition to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) should be gradual in order to reduce risk and ensure uptime during the change. When it comes to migration, slow and steady wins the race, since more rapid scenarios could put the entire call center at risk if there’s a problem. To facilitate a gradual transition model and service continuity, call centers must have both time-division multiplexing (TDM) and session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks running simultaneously.

To ensure uptime, organizations must also consider all of the protocols callers might use to reach them, as well as the primary power source that accommodates that contact. Since a power outage can shut down VoIP in an instant, a backup power system is a must. Once that is in place, contact center operators can ready themselves to interface with multiple inputs.

Customers will use land lines, mobile phones and tablets, Internet click–to-call or click-to-chat apps, home IP phones and even social networking platforms to reach the contact center. They’ll also expect diverse options for follow-up calls, including the opportunity to offer multiple phone numbers; to request text, social media or email messages; or to receive personalized videos. These capabilities are also about availability, as customers increasingly expect multiple contact options in the course of doing business.

Harness technology to improve customer experience
Cloud and hosted solutions offer contact center operators a quicker, less expensive path to implementation and maintenance. While there are advantages to on-premise and traditional enterprise communication models, the cloud model is attractive not only for the cost implications, but for its ability to deliver services more quickly and free up resources for other value-add options. Speech recognition is another area in which technology advancement benefits both the enterprise and its customers. As consumers embrace speech recognition applications like Apple’s Siri, they become more accepting of this feature within the call center. Customers often consider speech recognition as a bonus, since in most cases, it enables the caller to reach the right person faster. Furthermore, recent advancements in speech recognition solutions solve one of the primary complaints call centers hear from customers: that they have to repeat information as they progress through the system. Now, when a hand-off occurs from one department to another, customers get an easier transition, as long as the contact center has adopted speech recognition that supports voice-enabled scenarios.

Speech recognition is another area in which technology advancement benefits both the enterprise and its customers. As consumers embrace speech recognition applications like Apple’s Siri, they become more accepting of this feature within the call center. Customers often consider speech recognition as a bonus, since in most cases, it enables the caller to reach the right person faster. Furthermore, recent advancements in speech recognition solutions solve one of the primary complaints call centers hear from customers: that they have to repeat information as they progress through the system. Now, when a hand-off occurs from one department to another, customers get an easier transition, as long as the contact center has adopted speech recognition that supports voice-enabled scenarios.

Stay one step ahead of customer expectation
The enterprise needs a clear vision of its contact center technology provider’s roadmap. As long-term evolution (LTE) and VoIP become more prevalent in the home, customers will come to expect these video-enabling technologies from call centers, as well. In addition, the advent of Web real-time communication (WebRTC) will improve the ease and quality of browser-to-browser phone calls, a shift that must factor into future contact center transitions. To be sure that the investments of yesterday, today and tomorrow don’t quickly qualify as legacy, contact center operators must tune into evolving customer expectations and ensure that their vendor partners are planning ahead for the next big thing. 

About the author:
Jim Machi is vice president of product management at Dialogic, where he is responsible for driving the overall roadmap and product strategy for the company. Jim has been recognized by Internet Telephony magazine as one of the Top 100 Voices of IP Communications and by VoIP-News as one of the 50 most influential people in VoIP. Follow Jim on Twitter: @JMachiDialogic.

 
Return to main news page