Latest Contact Center Best Practices

According to Dimension Data’s recent Contact Center benchmarking report, digital channels (email, web chat, social media, SMS text, video chat), which currently account for roughly 35% of contact centers’ total interactions, are expected to overtake voice within the next two years. The catalyst?—the widespread adoption of Internet-connected mobile devices. Consider the following: by 2018, Cisco predicts that the number of mobile devices used by consumers will grow close to 8 billion.

Praised for its superior scalability, reliability, and cost savings, cloud has quickly picked up speed in the contact center space, as it has eliminated the need for large up-front infrastructure investments and server maintenance. While the majority of the market continues to rely on on-premise solutions, an astounding 70% of businesses have stated a desire to transition to a cloud alternative. But while many cloud contact center solutions appear to offer similar features and functionality, there are a number of fundamental differences between them that every decision maker should be aware of before choosing a solution.

An astounding 82% of today’s consumers say speed of service is the number one factor to a great customer experience. And as businesses increasingly seek ways to improve their customer service, many have turned to virtualization and self-service. Airlines use self check-in, restaurants allow customers to make their own reservations, and grocery stores have self check-out lines—the list goes on.  In the case of contact centers specifically, 62% of best-in-class companies use interactive voice response platforms in some capacity to facilitate the delivery of fast but relevant customer service.

Many company executives realize the importance of customer service to their organization. It’s no longer seen as just an outlet for customer complaints but instead a department to help ensure customer loyalty. As its core function, customer service is expected to effectively handle basic customer transactions.

Think back to a bad customer service experience. What do you wish the rep had done better? How about the best experience you had? If you’re like most people, you expect customer service to be able to quickly and proactively help answer questions and resolve issues. After all, isn’t that why they are there?

Technology has come a long way to enhance sales and marketing initiatives. From marketing automation tools, to customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, to predictive dialing solutions – the list goes on. And the results speak for themselves when you consider some agents have seen a 400% improvement in productivity and overall efficiency.

But what do those on the receiving end think of these enhanced outreach efforts?