Call Center of The Future
Call center – a place where excellent technology meets professionalism. There are no more unwanted calls. There is a perfectly targeted offer, support for many communication channels, tailored to the client’s preferences. Call center of the future? There are many indications of this.
It is not easy to talk about the future, but looking at the development of technology and telemarketing today, it is possible to predict with high probability what a call center will look like in a few years. Already today, there is a lot of talk about new trends in customer service – gamification that increases loyalty, multi-channel and contact via social media. Of course, there are also technological innovations, incl. moving the contact center infrastructure to the cloud. How will this translate into the functioning of customer service centers in the future? The most important changes will take place in three areas: IT, integrated communication and customer profiling.
The Helping Hand of Technology
The future will naturally bring further technological development – also in the field of customer service support. It seems that in 2021 the ICT system will tell the consultant much more about the client than it does today. For example, thanks to speech analysis, which will allow not only to identify the caller immediately, but also to determine his mood, level of interest in the offer and attitude to the conversation. In addition, the systems will probably be able to check customer activity in social media on the basis of customer data and quickly provide the consultant with all helpful information. Thanks to the availability and analysis of an increasing amount of data, new technological solutions will be able to profile customers very accurately, which means that there will not be a situation where a call center consultant calls a loan proposal to a person with millions on their account.
Knowledge in the first place
What else will surprise us in the future? Probably more and more possibilities of contact and integrated communication. Today we expect that we will be able to contact the customer service office in any place and in any way convenient for us. The call center of the future will not only handle all available communication channels, but also integrate them. Thanks to this, each consultant will know what a given client said in previous conversations a week or two ago, what he wrote in the chat a few months earlier, etc. This will help to avoid asking the same questions several times, as well as performing communication activities that the client does not want. What does it mean? More positive emotions on the part of the interlocutor, i.e. a greater chance of sales success.
Offer on request
There will also be a huge change in customer profiling. It is extremely important. It is known that the more precisely we know our customers, the better offer we are able to present them. Better, that is, tailored to their needs. So one that will really interest them. Why is it important? Nobody likes harassing calls with missed offers. Good profiling of clients will make them much more positive about telemarketing and will treat it as a helpful tool.
How to profile clients? For example, checking their activity in social media. If someone likes several pages with photos or holiday offers on FB, it is definitely a good time to call with a proposal for a holiday trip or travel insurance. It is also worth paying close attention to the age of customers – the way of communication with people under 30 must differ from the one we use for people over 50. Of course, some companies are already introducing such profiling mechanisms, but this is probably the future of call centers, which will change the perception of telemarketing.
Telemarketer on the wave
What about consultants? Will there be others in 2021? It used to be assumed that in the future they would work from their homes, but now it seems that they will not be. Therefore, the place of their work will not change, the technology that will support them in this work will change. The attitude towards them will also change. Telemarketers – thanks to technological changes that will allow them to avoid unwanted phone calls – will be a respected professional group, with good salaries and better working conditions. In 2021, very well-trained professionals who appreciate their work will work on the headphones. A risky thesis? Perhaps. However, it seems that the one who first leads to such a situation in his call center will win, because his services will be at a much higher level than those of the competition.
Observing the development of contact centers, it can be predicted that in 2021 we will use automatic customer service more intensively, but it will certainly not replace people. On the contrary – people will be the most important, the telemarketer profession will become highly professional, and a call center employee will be able to – using technology – guess the needs of his interlocutor without any problems. And this will ensure the success of telemarketing.