Just like we saw last year, customer engagement management is continuing to evolve, being driven by customer’s expectations. The customer experience is king! The biggest driving factor is technology which is opening up new ways to connect with your customers. Customers now expect to be able to choose the means of interaction that best suits them for their question or issue. While this can seem like a challenge for customer service professionals, this can be a great opportunity to transform your traditional contact center into to a multi-channel customer service model that will support a seamless customer experience regardless of how your customers choose to connect.
With that in mind, here are some of the top contact center trends for 2014:
- The Cloud, baby, the Cloud!! Businesses will continue to move their call center platforms to the cloud. It is estimated that between 2013 and 2015, cloud based infrastructure will have doubled in the Contact Center industry. Furthermore, the trend will continue and by 2016 when an estimated 50% of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the cloud. Cloud based infrastructure is attractive to the industry because of cost reduction, speed of deployment, flexibility and scalability and the ease of managing remote agents.
- Big Data and Analytics – Big data and the cloud go hand in hand. What we’ll see is as people start moving more and more of their applications to the cloud, there will be increased demand for integration of data across platforms both to increase the value of the customer experience once engaged but also to provide the metrics and ability to analyze your data. Metrics that you’ll need to manage the multi-channel experience based on volume and usage as well as granular details in mapping out the customer experience from social media, to email, to phone for example.
- Mobile devices continue to shape the customer experience and as the forecasted smart phone shipments are to top 1 billion this year worldwide, this is something that companies cannot ignore. Customers demand user-friendly navigation and engagement on mobile friendly websites and apps. We’ll start to see technology tools that have been common place on the web, become the norm in mobile as well, including call back and web-chat allowing customers to connect with a live agent directly from mobile apps.
- Social Media will continue to be a player and by mid-year and estimated 70% of businesses are expected to use social media for customer service. In a world where a customer complaint can go viral in seconds, whether your brand is actively pursuing social media or you’re hiding under a rock, you’re participating . . . it’s better to get in front of it. Businesses must make sure that they are not only reacting quickly to resolve customer issues but also proactively look for complaints about their product on social media (luckily hash tags and graph searches make this easier) and take initiative to correct them.
That being said, voice will continue to dominate! I think we’ve all had an experience where we’ve called into a vendor only to be “optioned to death” while trying to get a question answered or a problem resolved. Also, while email has increased in popularity, it offers a slower turnaround , leaving many users to result to a traditional call to gain immediate support proving that at the end of the day people still want to talk to people.
While your call center will undoubtably be challenged with increased customer expectations this year, the opportunity for and increas in customer satisfaction and loyalty is greater. Embracing new technology and focusing on the customer, however they choose to interact with your business, will allow your business to stand out from the competition!
Teltek is a Certified Avaya Business Partner, NEC Dealer, and Microsoft Partner with two locations in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. We specialize in providing one call technology support for small to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits in Maryland, Washington, DC and Virginia.