Posted by on December, 17 2019 8:29 pm
What does the contact center of the future look like? In the minds of many people, it is a fully automated call center - with fully-featured technology that makes long, awkward phone conversations and uncomfortable exchanges a thing of the past.
Here are just a few of the reasons to convert your facility to an automated call center - and how it will improve the way your business functions on nearly every level:
The number of people who describe themselves as being anxious during phone calls or hating making them grows every year. Millennials and Generation Z individual sare increasingly fond of text-based interactions for this same reason. However, traditional contact centers do the majority of their customer service via voice communications. How can your center accommodate the needs of your customers?
The answer is automation. By converting into an automated call center, you can offer more prerecorded, automated service options. This allows callers to provide as much service to themselves as possible - and personalize their experience as much as possible. That means that those who don’t enjoy phone calls can avoid live agent interaction in many scenarios and that those who would rather just do things themselves are also catered to.
Speaking of what modern consumers expect from customer service, faster response times and quicker resolutions to concerns are high on the list. One of the biggest benefits of employing automation in your center is that it cuts everything from caller wait times to the amount of time consumers actually have to spend on the phone with a live agent. This can help to resolve problems, answer questions, and address concerns more quickly. It can also provide a better customer experience since consumers aren’t stuck on the phone for longer than they would like to be.
Lastly, automation also helps your agents to more important work and field more calls while they’re on the clock since much of the “busy work” of their consumer interactions is handled by automation technology.
Labor costs. Hiring costs. Training costs. All of these are expenses that you can save by moving toward the model of an automated call center. While you will need to make an initial investment in the technology that will make automation possible, you will save a great deal more in the long run by implementing that technology in your facility. Automation means fewer man-hours are needed for smaller, more menial tasks. This frees up agents to focus on more important jobs while they’re at work - and frees up your company’s payroll, too!
Training your contact center staff is an incredibly important part of being successful. However, training also comes with a lot of inherent costs. Constantly bringing new agents up to speed and making them profitable members of your team can be a costly endeavor.
Thankfully, your automation technology doesn’t have the same requirements. To provide excellent service on a lasting basis, your technology only has to be set up - or “trained” - one time. From there, you simply provide technical maintenance as needed to ensure that your software continues to serve you well into the future.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had agents who were available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? When you’re an automated call center, you do! You can provide self-service and prerecorded options that allow consumers to meet their own needs within specific parameters no matter when they call. For today’s busy consumer, this is always the perfect schedule!
The expansion of your workforce to meet an increased need is known as a scaling - and it is difficult through traditional means. When you have a set number of agents on the clock, it is no easy task to call in additional employees or to hire more agents with a quick turnaround. However, an automated call center has little problem with scaling.
In the automated call center, chatbots and other AI automation features can meet increased consumer communication needs. They can field basic requests for information, prompt visitors to navigate over to websites where they can find self-service options, and more. This saves time for agents who are currently on the clock and also provides an excellent level of scalability that most contact centers sorely lack.
The service you provide to consumers should be as excellent in the morning as it is in the evening - and all points in between. Ensuring that customer service is reliable and consistent isn’t always easy, but for those who rely on automation technology, it is much more so. That’s because software programs offer consistent interaction with clients and consumers every time. There is no downtime for these programs; they don’t have bad days. This means that when consumers make contact with your center, they can expect excellence - no matter when they call.
While all of this information may make it seem as if a fully automated call center is the future of customer service, human interaction will always be important in the world of serving consumers. No amount of automation - no matter how high the quality - will ever fully compensate for the presence of live customer service agents. The best way to use technology is alongside well-trained, highly skilled agents. That way, consumers get all the benefits of both!
For all the tools and technology you need to create a fully functional automated call center, talk to the industry experts at ChaseData. We have everything you’ll need to outfit your operation with top-notch automation solutions and make every workday easier for your agents. Give us a call today to learn more!