The Digital Evolution of Call Centers - From Basic Call Support to Customer Experience Center

The age of basic call support is long gone and the customer service landscape is no longer a room filled with buzzing phones. Businesses have now embraced technology to provide superior customer support, boost customer satisfaction, and thrive in this digital era. Being amidst a crucial digital transition, customer service organizations are evolving from basic email and call support providers to advanced Customer Experience (CX) centers.

Cloud technology is at the center of this transition, which together with omnichannel communication is helping businesses improve customer care and reshape their customer engagement strategies. Working in omnichannel environments, agents monitor conversations across multiple platforms to understand what their customers are saying. This helps them build robust CX centers that not only resolve customer queries quickly but also ensure they get the necessary support with minimal effort.

However, the evolution of call centers hinges on the need of businesses to meet their customers' expectations and keep up with technological advancements. Let's now see how the digital transformation has impacted customer experience over the years.

1. Limited-channel vs. omnichannel communication

   Previously, calling customer support directly and sending out emails were popular ways to reach out to a business. Customers were put through long call queues and their queries were solved over multiple calls and email follow-ups. That's not the case today. Omnichannel communication systems enable customers to choose their preferred communication channel to get their issues resolved. Most businesses also use bots, which help customers get quick-fix answers outside business hours.

2. On-premises vs. cloud-based call centers

   Despite providing long hours of quality services, traditional on-premises call centers struggled to cope with the growing customer needs. Whereas, the Cloud-based contact centers assure easy scalability, where the agents work remotely to manage the fluctuating surge in customer requests. Moreover, the Cloud-based contact centers can be easily integrated with various third-party applications, from basic Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp Business to advanced ERP and CRM solutions. Complete Cloud solutions have all the applications built-in to ease customer service delivery and enhance the overall customer experience.

3. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) vs. skill-based call routing

   Traditional ACD systems were used to push customer calls to the next available agent. While this was an effective way to reduce call queues, it certainly did not assure the best customer experience. On the other hand, with skill-based call routing, the customer calls are routed to qualified and efficient customer support agents. When the best-fit agents are assigned to callers, they will quickly resolve their issues and provide them with personalized customer support.

4. In-office agents vs. remote agents

   Earlier, call center agents worked primarily from office spaces, which were crowded, noisy, and came with a cost, such as rent. The adoption of cloud platforms for contact centers has led to agents working remotely with minimal constraints. Such technological advancements support scalability and boost the efficiency of call center operations. The pandemic-induced paradigm shift towards remote working has further pushed agents to provide prompt and efficient customer support on time and boost customer experience.

5. Reactive vs. proactive services

   Agents working in traditional call centers had to go through the product information, understand it thoroughly, and wait till the customers called to find out what queries they had. Now, numerous tools help agents analyze customer journeys, identify their intent, and stay prepared with the best-fit responses or recommendations for their queries. Today, most of the people who reach out to contact centers expect the agents to be aware of their issues. Remote contact centers are equipped to integrate tools to analyze customer journeys, which empowers the agents to provide proactive services.

Digital Transition is Redefining Customer Satisfaction Metrics

In the past, call centers measured customer satisfaction based on the time taken to respond to a call, rather than the time taken to resolve a query. This resulted in agents hastily resolving customer requests, leaving them unsatisfied. Modern-day Cloud-based contact centers focus on advanced customer-centric metrics such as chat rating, first-call resolution, call abandonment rate, average call handle time, and more.

Analyzing these metrics allows businesses to identify the best agents and assign the call accordingly to meet customer expectations. Embracing Cloud-based contact centers helps you provide superior customer experience, improve agent efficiency, and enhance scalability. Now that the pandemic-driven need for remote call centers showed that the virtual call systems are equipped to provide high-quality customer care solutions from anywhere and anytime, the time is right for you to adopt this trend.

Connect with us now to find out how we help you transform your call center into a future-ready customer experience center.