Innovation will determine the success of the contact centre of the future

In the contact centre arena, innovation is becoming more important as new trends in technology drive transformation in the deployment of customer service and customer contact solutions.

Says Paul Fick, MD of Spescom DataFusion: “There’s a paradigm shift coming
in South Africa in terms of bandwidth use and it’s going to prompt a
transformation in the way contact centres function – from location to
operation – and in the demands customers place on the contact centre. And
while technology is important, it’s not what will make contact centres
successful going forward.

“Rather, success will be determined by their ability to innovate using
existing technologies to deliver services that offer real and sustainable
value to the business and to customers.”

The changing landscape:

Fick sketches an interesting picture of the changing communications
landscape. “With the explosion of bandwidth availability in South Africa,
the Internet is going to change business,” he says. “Just consider the
following: the Internet will be 75 times bigger in 2012 than it was in 2002.
Global IP traffic is doubling every two years, mobile data traffic is
doubling every year and in 2010, there are 6 million users in SA and 1.8
billion users world-wide. Knowing the profile of these customers and what
communication devices and platforms they use and prefer, will be important.

Half of Internet users are 25 to 55 yrs old, with the fastest growing
category being the 55+ age group, he says, and there is a 60/40 male to
female ratio online. Devices continue to proliferate: there are 1.4 billion
PCs worldwide and 8.7M in SA; there are five billion mobile phones
worldwide, 41 million of whom are in SA. 97% of SA web users have cell
phones and 75% of SA Web users use SMS.

Social Media platforms cannot be ignored. “Half of Facebook users go online
every day and overall, 22% of time spent on-line is for social media
access,” he notes. “In fact, 74% of SA on-line sessions are for social media
access.”

Among the trends that will transform contact centre technology, Fick lists
cloud services (public and private), new networks that are wireless by
default, increased mobility the proliferation of devices, the Social Media
phenomenon, access to information, greater availability of bandwidth and the
introduction of video to the contact centre.

“Contact centres need to be thinking ‘services’ not ‘technology’,” he says,
“because computing in the cloud is going to prompt some interesting
questions. For instance, will contact centres remain in the ‘centre’? This
technology allows virtual contact centres, remote sites and agents, and
virtual days. In fact, Gartner predicts that internationally, by 2013, 50%
of enterprises will mix premises solutions with cloud solutions in their
contact centres.”

The upshot of all this is that market models are getting more complex by the
week, says Fick. “New competitors are innovating and using business channels
you may not understand yet and your customers are talking to one another all
the time. Your customers are demanding multiple ways to talk to you, and
your sales people want to talk to your customers in this way too. People
want things now, ‘all the time’ and for free.

“Customers have never had so many choices -the challenge will be to
understand what they prefer.”

The contact centre of the future:

The contact centre operation has to be efficient and cost effective while
furthering customer satisfaction.
As the distinction between networks continues to blur, what sits where in
the network becomes less important, he says. “Multimedia enablement is
something of the past; now it is about ‘all media’ in the core of the
contact centre. Social media cannot be ignored and the emphasis needs to be
on people interaction via an ever increasing amount of media and channels.
Process automation, workflow and business application integration need to
follow suit. In addition, finding alternative ways to serve the customer or
market a product must play a big role. In achieving this, access to skills,
knowledge and expertise will be critical.”

Identifying and developing the capacity for innovation within the
organisation means fostering a passion for change and treating every line
function as a target for innovation, says Fick. “The time to optimise is
now. Don’t cut costs until you have nothing left – be innovative, think
outside the box. Understand the potential impact on people in the centre
and people who support the technology, on process and on cost.

“For now, for older people, voice is still the preferred communication
channel, but understand where and in what circumstances you have to address
mail, chat and Web collaboration. Social media feed and response mechanisms
also need attention. Proactive outbound, voice and other channels are
becoming mainstream and self-help has its place, especially for Generation-Z
people. Also, consider customer contact as a service, whether it’s an
outsourced, hosted, owned or a hybrid of these service’s models.

For the ‘Contact Centre in the Cloud’, Fick notes that organisations should
consider the potential impact on process, bandwidth requirements and cost,
security implications and disaster recovery and business continuity risks.

Looking forward, Fick proposes organisations identify how to serve the
consumer of the future applicable to their business. “Consider the ‘Context
Centre’ – take advantage of where you are and your time zone and factor in
reality in digital terms, gear to serve at the juncture where the digital
world meets the physical world.”

For more visit Spescom’s Press Office