Technology Outlook for Contact Centers in 2017

Written by KOVA Corp

As 2016 draws to a close, it’s time to look toward what’s next in contact center technology for 2017.

Workforce optimization, customer service tools, Voice of the Customer - these are all areas in which technology continues to change and improve.

We went through some of the leading surveys and studies on these topics to find the top predictionsfor 2017. You can get a quick picture of the trends with this infographic from the Contact Center Network Group.

More contact centers migrate to the cloud.

According to a 2016 survey of contact centers by 8x8 and the Contact Center Network Group, more than 75 percent of contact centers have recognized the value the cloud has for their industry.

25 percent of contact centers have fully deployed their cloud services already; 28 percent have partially migrated to the cloud; and 21 percent plan to migrate to the cloud within the next year.

This has implications for software solution providers, which will need to focus on their cloud offerings to ensure their security, ease-of-use, and ease-of-migration. Solutions like the Verint Media Recorder Workforce Management solution are available as cloud or on-premise solutions, and are a great way to start your enterprise’s migration to cloud services.

Organizations are overhauling customer service protocols to fit an omnichannel world.

Customer service is still king - it just looks a whole lot different than it did 15 or even 5 years ago.

Lots of organizations are taking a complete, 360-degree look at their customer service processes and protocols to make them fit the omnichannel world that we’re now living in.

That means ensuring that response times for customer service are quick and efficient, as well as that customers have multiple channels through which to contact you. And that doesn’t just mean email and phone anymore.

Customers want to be able to get in touch through channels from live chat to social media, and they want their questions acknowledged - and if possible, resolved - fast. In addition, the experience across all channels should be seamless, whether the mode of contact is text, chat, phone, or a web form.

Self-service options are also an important part of this new omnichannel customer service universe, and more contact centers will implement them over the next year. Self-service tools include speech-recognition IVR, web-based knowledge portals, robot-assisted channels, and virtual agents.

Workforce management and optimization software is still underutilized.

Despite the many workforce management tools available, more than half of contact centers - 58 percent, according to the 8x8 survey - are still reporting using spreadsheets to manage everything from scheduling to performance.

This is surprising, given how much easier these functions can be with a simple software solution. The Verint Media Recorder Workforce Optimization suite, for example, allows users to:

  • Create schedules for an entire network of contact centers, or allow for scheduling to be done on a location-by-location basis.
  • Perform quality monitoring and recording
  • Access voice of the customer analytics
  • Use performance management tools

And much more. Getting these functions out of a manually updated spreadsheet, which is not only tedious to keep current but also highly prone to human error, and into a dedicated software system is going to become more prevalent this year as contact centers find themselves needing to produce more, and more accurate, data.

More contact centers are utilizing remote workers.

Remote workers have been a staple of the contact center workforce for several years, but their numbers have been steadily growing over the past year. This seems certain to continue, with 59 percent of businesses claiming to have work-at-home workers, according to that same 8x8 survey.

One reason for the continued growth in this area is that the technology to support these workers is getting better every year.

Take the cloud, for example. As more contact centers migrate their systems over to the cloud, there will be more and more opportunities for at-home workers. All they’ll have to do to “go to work” is log in to the system on their laptops and put on a company headset.

A major factor to consider when hiring remote workers is security. If your workers have access to sensitive customer information, like Social Security numbers or bank information, it’s vital that your phone and cloud services employ industry standard security measures that are totally up-to-date. This is something you must discuss with your software vendor when deciding which solution to purchase.

It appears as though many of the trends for 2017 will be continuations of 2016 trends - areas in which the technology is rapidly evolving, improving customer service and agent efficiency across the industry.

For more on specific trends for contact centers, read our post “4 Customer Engagement Trends for the Financial Services Industry.”

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