ICMI recently carried out a study to gather insight into the contact center industry priorities for this year and the coming years.
The survey, sponsored by inContact, involved at least 500 contact center experts, covering both large and small contact centers across at least 20 countries globally. Respondents were surveyed regarding the short- and long-term objectives of the contact center industry, along with investment trends.
The survey also revealed insights on the rising intricacies, agent management attrition and rising requirements for consumer information.
"A few short years ago during the economic downturn, contact centers were laser-focused on driving down costs and riding out the storm,” said Mariann McDonagh, CMO at inContact. “Today, as this new study illustrates, the customer service macro trends – social, mobile and self-service – are driving contact centers to transform their operations to be more customer centric and responsive. These findings clearly demonstrate that, over the next five years, contact center leaders will make informed technology decisions that help them achieve these demanding requirements."
According to two-thirds of the respondents, accomplishments in a contact center are calculated in terms of fulfilling service level agreements. Over 40 percent of contact centers admitted to agent attrition, while one-fourth of the respondents faced customer attrition. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents have termed rising intricacies as one of the key difficulties faced, mainly due to the propagation of new channels and more and more multichannel customers.
Only one-third of the respondents, however, have proactively dealt with channel propagation by enhancing their contact centers accordingly.
"We are excited by the findings of this survey and the opportunities these results offer to inContact and the cloud contact center industry,” McDonagh said. “Our award-winning cloud portfolio is perfectly positioned to help contact centers address all the issues on their high priority list - customer loyalty and satisfaction, agent performance and retention and, most importantly, how to increase profitability through every service experience."
The survey results have been incorporated by ICMI in the whitepaper titled, "Leveraging Complexity: Trends and Strategies for Future Success in the Contact Center."
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