We asked our audience ‘What Technology Do You Have in Your Contact Centre?’ Read on to find out the most and least common contact centre technology.
The results taken from our survey report, “What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now 2021 Edition”, outline which technologies contact centres have, want, and don’t have.
| Contact Centre Technology | Have | On Wish List | Don’t Have |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headsets | 97.7% | 0.9% | 1.4% |
| ACD / Call Routing | 92.5% | 2.4% | 5.2% |
| Call Recording | 90.7% | 3.7% | 5.6% |
| Performance Management / Quality Monitoring | 84.6% | 12.6% | 2.8% |
| IVR | 81.5% | 6.5% | 12.0% |
| Knowledge Base | 66.2% | 26.2% | 7.6% |
| Voice of the Customer / Customer Survey | 64.1% | 16.8% | 19.1% |
| Wallboards | 60.0% | 14.8% | 25.2% |
| Customer Feedback Solution | 59.0% | 23.6% | 17.5% |
| Social Media Engagement | 50.7% | 19.0% | 30.3% |
| Call Scripting | 48.1% | 17.6% | 34.3% |
| Call Back from Queue Solution | 47.6% | 23.3% | 29.1% |
| Workforce Management Software | 44.8% | 23.8% | 31.4% |
| Process Automation | 38.5% | 37.1% | 24.4% |
| Desktop Consolidation | 36.2% | 24.3% | 39.5% |
| Chatbot | 34.3% | 36.7% | 29.1% |
| Proactive SMS Messaging | 30.8% | 19.4% | 49.8% |
| Single Queue across All Channels | 30.8% | 22.6% | 46.6% |
| Customer Service Smartphone App | 28.4% | 24.0% | 47.6% |
| Interaction / Speech Analytics | 24.0% | 35.6% | 40.4% |
| Predictive Dialler | 19.6% | 14.8% | 65.6% |
| WebRTC | 19.3% | 14.9% | 65.8% |
| Voice Biometrics | 7.7% | 25.1% | 67.2% |
From this information we can draw several key observations about contact centre technology.
AI-Powered Software Is on the Rise
Process automation, chatbots and interaction analytics are all AI-infused technologies. Each has increased in usage over the past 12 months.
So, is the AI revolution finally upon us? Let’s not get quite so carried away, as fewer than 40% of contact centres have implemented any of these three technologies.
Discover more insights and charts like this in our report “What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now (2021 Edition)”.
However, it’s worth highlighting that many contact centres also have these technologies “on their wish list”, with interaction analytics being a key example.
While only 24.0% of contact centres have implemented the technology, 35.6% wish to. This underlines the significant growth potential of this particular AI tool.
Voice of the Customer (VoC) Technology Continues to Take Over
64.1% of contact centres have now invested in VoC software, increasing from the figure of 62.5% that was reported in 2020.
This growth of 2.6 percentage points may not seem like much, but the trend goes back further. Since 2018, an additional 32.4% of contact centres are now using VoC tools to uncover hidden customer insights.
Paired with the growth of interaction analytics – which is also being utilized at an unprecedented rate – and it seems that collecting customer data is a growing trend across the industry.
Social Media Engagement Falls
One technology that appears to be falling out of favour is social media engagement, as contact centres prioritize other critical channels.
According to our research, only 50.7% of contact centres are now using the technology to interact with customers over social channels. In 2019, the percentage was as high as 57.4%.
Yet social media engagement is not the only technology to fall out of favour. Call scripting, desktop consolidation and predictive diallers are also being used at a lesser rate than was the case 12 months ago.
Latest Survey Report
These findings come from the survey report “What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now (2021 Edition)”, featuring over 40 insights into contact centre operations. Download the latest survey report to get more great insights.
The results of the survey were collected in July and August 2021, and we are delighted to publish this report in partnership with Akixi, NICE, Nuance, Odigo, Poly and ProcedureFlow.
Source: Call Centre Helper Survey: What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now (2021 Edition) Sample size – 224 Date: August 2021
Author: Robyn Coppell
Published On: 17th Jan 2022
Read more about - Contact Centre Research, Akixi, Artificial Intelligence, NICE, Nuance, Odigo, Poly, ProcedureFlow, Voice of the Customer
