The contact center industry had to quickly adapt to new challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, from handling more complex calls to adjusting to remote work. Those who stay up to date with industry trends can more easily and quickly pivot in response to market changes. We predict several 2023 contact center trends that will help improve customer experience and business efficiencies:
Increased Focus on Self-Service Tools
Self-service customer support options will increase in response to consumers’ preference for quickly finding solutions on their own rather than waiting for assistance. This is especially true of the tech and social media savvy younger generation. Also, not every inquiry requires a live agent. Some answers can be quickly found by customers through company resources that are well put together, easily accessible, and easy to understand.
By providing self-service resources, customer service wait times are reduced, allowing agents to focus on solving more high-priority and complex inquiries. There are various forms of self-service such as video tutorials, forums, FAQ documents, and chatbots. Each of these should be optimized to give customers as much value as possible.
Improved IVR Systems
There are many channels to choose from for communicating with customers today, but the phone remains important. IVR systems have been used in the contact center industry for many years and, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have increased their usage. According to Finance Online, one in three companies adopted this technology for the first time, while 42 percent of organizations already using IVR increased its use.
With developments in AI technology, more advanced IVR systems are emerging, such as conversational IVR. AI technology has allowed for speech recognition in IVR systems which has led to call centers being able to route callers to the correct departments and agents with ease. This saves a lot of time since customers are able to reach the right agent more directly rather than potentially having to speak to several agents before finding the one that can help with their particular issue. In addition, with the assistance of AI technology, contact centers can view IVR data about customers, such as their history, which allows for increased customer personalization.
Increased Recall Technology Usage
Maintaining accuracy is an important part of contact center operations, so it’s no surprise that the use of Recall Technology is expected to increase in 2023. This technology helps prevent errors in communications with customers that can have a negative impact on a company. The AI technology helps filter out communications that are not desirable or not accurate. Unwanted messages in conversations are detected and quickly resolved.
More Conversational Technology
Currently, most customer service bots can only handle basic and repetitive customer interactions. But with the help of AI, modern chatbots that use natural language understanding (NLU) will become more common. This technology allows bots to learn from customer interactions and handle more complicated customer service inquiries. It also helps organizations to manage many aspects of operations such as recruiting, screening, onboarding, and training employees, as well as managing individuals, documents, and expenses. It can also assist with generating and nurturing customer leads in addition to helping with onboarding and supporting customers.
Increased Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Customer service is often regarded as the “face” of a company since it deals directly with customers and represents the company brand. However, in many cases, companies need to become more integrated with their customer support teams. With increased integration, agents can gain more insights about the company to improve customer service, and the company can gain more insights about what happens in the call center. Whatever the future holds, the CH Consulting Group team (with more than 100 years of combined experience) is ready to help you leverage the technology and processes that drive business success. Learn more at chconsultinggroup.com or contact us directly at 218-286-4006 or via email.
