Multimedia channel use is set to rise exponentially over the next two years. Video and WhatsApp are expected to increase by 311% and 470% respectively.
An Intelecom survey of over 400 contact centres shows where key investments are being made, and what to expect in the near future.
Intelecom asked for feedback on six areas, to find out what really matters in the contact centre, from people, customers and technology to which trends to look out for.
Highlights of Intelecom’s survey indicate that voice is still the predominant channel, followed by email, mail and even fax, with webchat growing by 82%. The rise in social media is supported by 41% of respondents, who claim Facebook is the most popular communication medium. This is followed closely by Twitter at 40%.
The three most important metrics for today’s contact centre are customer satisfaction, service level and first contact resolution. Call abandonment and average handling time are still actively used to measure performance in webchat, video and WhatsApp.
Traditional premise-based contact centres remain prevalent, with cloud-based contact centres accounting for just over 10%. However, the trend points towards a blend of both traditional and cloud infrastructures as a more realistic option.
The majority of applications used by agents are in-house developed systems. The most popular ready-made solutions are Oracle (20%) Salesforce (19%) and Microsoft Dynamics (15%).
Most contact centre professionals still rely on their own customer satisfaction surveys. Email surveys are also a popular option and post-call IVR surveys are used to acquire the ’voice of the customer’. Surprisingly, nearly 10% of respondents claim never to ask for customer feedback, with a further 10% using speech analytics to gauge reactions from customers.
Børge Astrup
“The results show that the contact centre is very much alive and kicking with customer service as a priority. There is plenty of scope for technological advances and business growth as the contact centre transitions to a truly multichannel environment and transforms itself into a highly interactive customer engagement forum,” said Børge Astrup, Managing Director of Intelcom Contact Centre Division.
Author: Megan Jones
Published On: 16th Dec 2015 - Last modified: 2nd Jan 2020
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