What Technology Is Behind a Call Center?

Companies with a customer experience (CX) mindset generate up to 8% higher revenue than their competitors. But today’s call center is not just a series of telephones connected to the same business number. It is the technology behind your support environment that makes the difference in your customer service strategy.

The right technology means you can instantly send customers to the most skilled agents to take their call. It also ensures that today’s consumers can connect with brands across multiple platforms and channels.

What Is Contact Center Technology?

Call center technology is a term that refers to the technical components that shape the customer journey. When a customer connects with a company through any channel, technology is what supports that interaction, makes sure that it reaches an agent, that it gets the response it needs, etc.

Some of the more traditional examples of contact center technology include IVR systems for routing calls, music on hold, or call forwarding. All these systems, among others, contribute to strengthening the connections between organizations and users.

In recent years, as customers have begun to expect more from the companies they can interact with, call center technology has become more advanced and needs to do more than support user calls. Therefore, it is also necessary for the contact center to be able to:

• Connect different channels such as messaging, video and social networks.
• Offer self-service solutions through chatbots and virtual agents.
• Analyze conversations that provide useful information for agents.

Driving better experiences for agents and customers means that companies have to map each stage of the customer journey and make sure there is some kind of technology to support each step.

What Are the Trends in Call Center Technology?

Today’s business leaders still need many components of traditional contact center technology, such as both local and international numbering. Call routing tools and forwarding systems are also needed, which are currently much more advanced thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

However, in an environment where 96% of customers indicate that service is crucial to the company and brand they choose, call center technology is becoming a key differentiator. Some of the trends that have emerged in recent years include:

• CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service): As the cloud becomes a more attractive option for businesses that need scalability and flexibility, CCaaS is growing. Contact center solutions as a service give businesses access to the tools they need for a great customer experience.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is a big trend in call center technology. Thanks to it, companies can evaluate the sentiment in a customer’s voice and track their satisfaction during the customer journey. Analytics based on Artificial Intelligence also help companies develop insights on how agents respond to certain customer situations. This helps train employees. AI also routes clients to the correct agent. Smart routing reduces the risk of a customer needing to repeat the same query multiple times.

• Workforce Optimization and Management: WFO (Workforce Optimization) and WFM (Workforce Management) are valuable in the call center. These solutions enable business leaders to track agent performance. In an environment where contact centers can hire remote workers, efficiency and productivity are maintained no matter what. WFO and WFM solutions can also keep teams engaged with leaderboards and gamification.

• Omnichannel Travel Mapping: Customer experience doesn’t just happen over the phone. Today’s businesses need to engage with customers across all channels. Mapping the customer journey in the contact center enables organizations to ensure that they can reach users everywhere. This includes the use of social media, instant messaging, and video, among others. The right omnichannel tools will not only open new doors for customers, they will also align all of their communication systems so they can keep track of the entire customer experience.

• Analysis and Security: Analysis in the call center offers multiple benefits. The right statistics can show how to serve customers more effectively, improve security and privacy. For example, Speech Analytics is rapidly changing the way security is approached in the contact center.

Technology At the Heart of the Call Center

As the world continues to transform digitally, contact center technology becomes more complex. Chatbots and virtual agents help customers solve their problems on their own. Thus, call center agents can spend more time solving more complex problems. At the same time, the virtual assistants in the call center can display valuable information for an agent and help him solve a customer’s problem faster.

Moreover, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can track the emotion in a person’s voice and instantly alert a supervisor if a conversation starts to go wrong.

In conclusion, the right technology not only offers companies the opportunity to better support customers, but also helps agents and team. While not every organization will need all the technology in the call center landscape right away, finding the right tools could put you on the road to incredible results.