Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Consumers are consistently tolerating less and less in terms of customer service deliverables where contact and call centers are concerned. Is it because there are better technologies available that enable companies to be able to deliver a better experience? Are we currently seeing higher levels with some companies, so we expect the same from all?

 

Whatever the reasons, the reality is that consumers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the service they are receiving when interacting with the contact center. However, new research has indicated that there may be a solution to changing this trend by implementing voice over Internet protocol or VoIP in the contact center.

 

According to the Merchants Europe survey, global customer satisfaction with contact centers has fallen to 62 percent from 82 percent just last year. Wait times can greatly impact the customer’s satisfaction when dealing with the contact center. In the telecommunications and service provider sector, which includes ISPs and fixed-line and mobile telecommunications companies, the wait time is the longest at 65 seconds. This industry sector also has the highest rate of caller hang ups.

 

Dimension Data, an IT consulting firm, predicts that VoIP will actually go a long way in helping to improve customer satisfaction. This prediction is partly due to the fact that 20 percent of contact center interactions are now taking the form of e-mail and text messages. The firm’s Paul Scott noted that what they are likely to see is an increased technology presence to make the customer interaction across all of those channels seamless and much less clunky than it is now.

 

In order for these improvements to become a reality, however, centers have to do more than just implement and use VoIP. They also must be sure that the self-service channels are easy to use and address common issues for consumers that frequent that channel. They also must implement an effective way to monitor the customer experience from the customer’s side. Too often, technology is implemented to improve the customer service level, yet the actual interaction is never captured and customers are lost without any indication as to why.

 

The statistics for follow-up on these channels are not yet good. Research has shown that only about 50 percent of contact centers monitor e-mail inquiries to ensure a response is delivered within 24 hours. That means that another 50 percent out there have no idea how they are performing in this channel. Without this knowledge, one would wonder how managers were able to justify the cost of implementing a Web self-service channel in the first place.

 

Achieving optimum satisfaction in the contact center is critical for the organization to maintain a competitive edge and protect its base. While VoIP can go a long way to help the center accomplish this, VoIP alone is not the magical formula.

 

 

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.