3CLogic's Contact Center Blog

The numbers don’t lie: today’s contact centers are expected to resolve issues fast. 80% of calls, according to data from Cloudtalk, are expected to be answered within 20-30 seconds and the average call duration is four minutes. 

It’s no surprise then that leading companies are adopting voice self-service solutions in addition to their IVR solutions to not only manage call volume but provide a higher quality of customer service and improve call agent performance. 

The question is no longer should I adopt voice self-service for my contact center? It’s how can I adopt it as fast and as efficiently as possible? This article will tell you where to begin so you can start unlocking the massive benefits of voice self-service for your business.

Today, 70% of enterprises either have a digital transformation strategy in place or are actively working on one. Nearly half say improving customer experience and customer satisfaction were the leading influences driving the focus and effort. In fact, 72% of enterprises expect digital transformation to create closer relationships with customers. However a new report revealed that digital transformation projects are stalling due to a “hesitancy gap”, as enterprises struggle to navigate the risks and complexity associated with turning innovation from concept to reality.

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.

The customer service space has undoubtedly evolved over the past several years, and the momentum is not expected to slow down as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance. AI-powered voice recognition software—known to the customer service space as the “virtual agent”—has already made its way into many of today’s contact centers, replacing live agents to assist clients with a variety of tasks and inquiries. Coupled with the proliferation of messaging apps, many are also beginning to see the development of chatbots—software programs that use messaging as the interface through which to carry out any number of tasks, from checking an account balance, to making a reservation, to helping users buy a pair of shoes. Virtual assistant startup, Interactions, recently secured an additional $56 million in funding, indicating that the trend is certainly picking up speed.

By 2020, the customer is expected to manage 85% of their relationships with a business without interacting with a human—something that should come as no surprise when considering the rising popularity of self-service channels across the web, mobile apps, and voice (IVR). As a matter of fact, Forrester recently conducted a survey, which revealed that web self-service (through online knowledge bases) is now the most commonly used communication channel for customer service, the first and only channel to exceed voice in history. And as mobile device adoption continues to expand and consumers increasingly demand fast and effortless engagement with the businesses serving them, many have been left wondering—will alternative touch points soon cause the call center agent to become non-existent?