Skip to main content

4 Reasons call centers are becoming outmoded



4 Reasons call centers are becoming outmoded

Call centers have been around for decades. Everyone is familiar with how they work and almost everyone has had at least one bad experience with using one. Did you ever put off calling an 800 number because you didn't want to deal with an annoying phone tree (IVR), waiting on hold, or just the tedium of slowly spelling out your name, address, email, and credit card number? You are not alone. Historically, call centers have had some serious limitations when it comes to customer satisfaction. Of course, that reputation may be unfair. There are many well-run call centers, but the call center model is becoming outmoded. Much of it has to do with the one-dimensional nature of the call center; it is a single channel communication tool. Call centers are primarily, or even solely, places where customers can communicate with a business via voice channel. (At the start, this meant traditional telco lines; now it likely means VoIP.) Below are 4 fundamental reasons the call center isn’t meeting all of the communication needs of your customers.
  1. Waiting. As mentioned in the introduction, the call center model carries a lot of heavy baggage. Decades of consumer experience with wait times, disconnects, wait times, language barriers, wait times–you get the picture–have soured many on this mode of communication. Any opportunity to bypass the phone call can be very attractive.
  2. Call centers often use IVR or phone trees, which demand layers of automated options before you can reach a live person. Too often these IVRs don’t offer the specific option that meets the caller’s needs. More frustration.
  3. In many cases, live voice communication is overkill. Customers may have very simple, quickly answered questions that another communication channel could handle with less tedium for the user. For instance, an order status inquiry. Waiting on hold for this basic piece of data is annoying. Contact centers can send scheduled emails updating the status of shipping. A chat box can receive a quick text request and respond quickly while the customer does other things.
  4. Call centers can’t be easily proactive. If a business wants to respond to a customer inquiry or proactively provide updates of any type, such as new information or marketing materials, the voice channel can be frustrating. The chances that a callback to a customer will be answered aren't very high. Time zone issues, voicemail, and the tendency of everyone to not answer a call from an unfamiliar number means that outbound contact efforts won't be very successful. An email or text, however, can be very effective in these scenarios.
In summary, the call center role is relatively limited because of its one-channel dimension in a world where your customers want to communicate via a wide variety of communication routes. It still has value, but it can no longer be your only channel.

Our Omni-Channel Cloud Contact Center leverages the “software as a service” (SaaS) model to deliver a customizable and easy to use call center solution. You will have all the advanced communication tools at your fingertips that will help you in enhancing your customer experience and delivering outstanding support.

Comments

  1. Jordan and Aneesa discuss their lengthy historical past of success and how they plan to continue their track report of loyalty, truthful play and hard-fought wins this season. Snooki and JWoww hunt for the perfect house in Jersey City, NJ, for one final hurrah, however before signing the lease, the ladies have to deal with a big secret. Cara joins her associates in rural West Virginia for the summer season, then catches the attention of each Tyler and Shain, and a raucous get together on the girls' house results in trouble 쏘걸 with the neighbors.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Casinos prolong billions of dollars of loans to their prospects each year in the type of credit markers. The casinos cost 3% to 10% interest or extra for that service. In truth, only about half the money wagered in casinos are funds physically introduced 아벤카지노 onto the premises. There are horse tracks, canine tracks, jai-alai frontons, daily fantasy leagues and online gambling websites for these so inclined.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Four ways unified communications can improve productivity Part II

Four ways unified communications can improve productivity Part II In our last blog we suggested that unified communications has value to an organization's efforts to increase productivity. It can facilitate smoother, more efficient collaboration in a 24/7 workspace. Unified communications can Improve the functionality of our 24/7 workplace - The reality of 24/7 availability has been around for a while, and learning to place constraints on that is for another e-guide. However, unified communications can play a role on the 24/7 expectation problem. For one thing, with a single portal to an individual’s multiple communication channels, an employee can more easily communicate across those channels that they are not available and therefore limit expectations for an immediate or timely response when that is not possible. Also, with a unified portal, responding to different channels in off times can be easier and therefore less time-intrusive. Improve client satisfaction - Nothin

Five Ways Your Business Can Improve Its Search Engine Rankings

  In an age where most business happens online, not showing up in Google search results can really hurt you. While there’s no real shortcut to showing up consistently on web searches, there are a few quick fixes to get your site to show up on your potential customer’s search results...   1. HTML tags -  Important HTML tags include the title tag, meta description and meta keywords. Make sure each page of your website has appropriate HTML tags. The title tag of each page should be unique and relevant to that particular page.   2. Alternative text images -  Ensure that most of the images on your website have alternative text tags. Alt tags are basically descriptions for images. By adding relevant alternative tags to images, you are allowing search engines to recognize them, which will improve the likelihood of your page showing up in search results.   3. File hierarchy -  How simple is your HTML file hierarchy? Check to see if your website’s pages are logically situated and avoid too many

Has Your Website Been Optimized for Mobile Users?

    Did you know that this year there will be more mobile web surfers than stationary ones? That means more prospects are accessing your business website more through their smart phones, tablets or other mobile devices than with a laptop or PC. If you thought you had time to make the switch this year, you may want to reconsider in light of new research. A recent study revealed that around 40% of prospects move on to a competitor if they have a poor mobile experience. How prepared is your business for this change? Well, if you are just starting out, the following checklist will help...   1. Make sure your mobile site is different from your regular website -  While you must stick to your branding standards, your mobile website should be simpler than your web version. The reason being is that complicated designs that load well and look good on computers are often distorted when accessed through a mobile device. Plus, mobile surfers don’t really have the time to sift through a lot of conte