What will your next generation call centre look like?

TODAY’S socially-networked consumers not only expect more from their suppliers but now, more than ever, they have more outlets to voice their opinions experiences.  That’s why planning for your next-generation call centre is more important than ever.

Aspect believes that unified communications and collaboration will provide the foundation for next-generation centres by connecting the enterprise and the customer in a multitude of ways.  New communication channels, for example, will take contact channels beyond voice, chat and email to SMS/text messaging modes, customer communities using social networking and access to content-rich, user-directed, self-service experiences through the internet.

And, as social media continues to democratise the customer experience, consumers will increasingly demand interactions with fellow consumers and corporate decision-makers to gain a larger voice in the brands they champion.

These trends will bring either risk or opportunity to companies looking to build relationships that cultivate loyalty – and the outcome will ultimately depend on whether or not businesses take action.

Next-generation contact centres will require a unified platform to initiate dialogue and respond to inquiries in a consistent manner across these new contact channels. This platform will serve to integrate business rules and centralise communication channel management and administration, empowering business line managers to monitor and optimise operational and agent performance in real time.

Traditional solutions, such as ACDs with integral PBXs and other stand-alone “point solutions” will rapidly be replaced by software-based models that unite all of the components of a contact centre architecture to reduce complexity, cost and risk, increase system reliability and leverage technologies like unified communications and collaboration.

Essential elements of a next generation customer contact platform will include:

§  Advanced technologies that bring customer contact processes into the enterprise

§  Standards-based technology

§  Seamless, multichannel capabilities in a unified platform

§  Blended capabilities to support intelligent outbound (proactive) and inbound contact

§  Unified communications capabilities including rich presence, instant messaging and multimedia conferencing

§  Capabilities that leverage social networks, online communities, web portals and enterprise search and knowledge stores

§  Tightly integrated workforce optimisation capabilities that use unified communications and collaboration to track interactions into the enterprise

§  Support for consolidated CRM views

§  Strong strategic professional services that ensure companies fully leverage intellectual capital with communications-enabled business processes

To address the needs of the changing consumer most effectively, companies must also devise social network and online community strategies that make effective use of their vendors’ IT services, leverage communications channels to collect customer data, proactively deliver information and service to customers via their preferred channels, and integrate CRM systems to optimise sales, customer service and collections business processes.

 For more details, please email marketing.uk@aspect.com