Call centres: Key technologies enabling better customer service

Call centres often need to strike the right balance between call centre software and their business needs. Today, call centre agents do not focus on using one specific software and instead focus on a plethora of software depending on the expected output.

Consumers today have become more demanding and often prefer seamless omnichannel communications. Many would prefer to have a conversation over email or chat and may even shift to a telephonic conversation later on. 

Contact centre agents have to leverage the right software to ensure that the omnichannel customer service experience is seamless and hassle-free.  Here’s a quick look at the most common software that call centres use:-

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) software:  This is the first software that one is likely to encounter while getting in touch with a call centre. Inbound calls are automated using this technology wherein pre-recorded voice messages are used to interact with customers.  Specific inputs are required or interaction happens via speech recognition. IVR helps direct calls to specific agents who are best suited to resolve the customer’s query based on the data gathered, However, IVR software may eventually be replaced by conversational AI.

According to Market Research Future, the global market for IVR is expected to reach USD 3.7 billion by 2023 and is growing at a CAGR of 7 percent, during the forecast period of 2017 to 2023.

Cloud-Based Calling

Voice based communication services are offered via a cloud based host. It essentially means moving the PBX from an on-premise location to the cloud. A VoIP solution enables contact centres to better handle interactions across channels while maintaining quality expectations from customers.

As per MarketsandMarkets, the cloud based contact centre market is estimated to be worth USD 36.1 billion by 2025, from a market size of 11.5 billion in 2020 and is growing at a CAGR of 25.8 percent during the forecast period. 

Call Center CRM

A CRM software is what enables contact centre agents to access customer information acon the fly. It enables them to have a seamless interaction with customers across channels like email, chat, messaging app, or a phone. CRM lies at the heart of seamless omni-channel communications. 

As per estimates, CRM software is the largest software market in the world and is expected to be worth $ 80 billion by 2025.

Automatic call distribution software

This is a call management software. Today, it is often integrated with other software like an IVR and CRM. As the name suggests calls are re-routed to agents based on certain predetermined conditions for specific desired business outcomes.

For instance, a caller who selects loans is routed to an agent from the loans department.

The growth of the automatic call distribution is usually tied with the IVR and CRM solutions as it is an  ancillary software solution.

Conversational AI and AI driven analytics

Sometimes, contact centres have to handle a large volumes of calls which can impact call quality and efficiency. AI can help predict the call volumes in advance so that the appropriate measures are taken in advance to handle traffic. Conversational AI can help reduce the workload from human personnel who can focus on more challenging endeavours. 

AI driven analytics can convert voice calls to text and conduct a dialogue based analysis. This analysis can identify key areas of improvement to improve resolution times and create customer experiences that delight. The conversational AI market is expected to be worth AUS 22.6 billion by 2024 from AUD 6 billion in 2019 as per Deloitte. Whereas the conversational analytics is growing at an expedited pace in the new normal as more customers for digital experiences

Conclusion

Contact centres have to use an array of software to enable customer service agents  to create seamless omnichannel experiences for customers.  Today, it is all about striking a balance between skilled contact centre personnel and technology. For many centres it is about making these various technologies work in sync coupled with well-trained customer service agents that helps them achieve business outcomes effectively.