2015: End of Contact Center
This seems to be radical, and I don’t believe that we are close to seeing a world full of tables and chairs, telephones, keyboards, and computers in abandoned contact center buildings, still filled with the echo of the phrase “How can I help you ? ”However, many professionals I have met seem to keep the focus on reducing customer service costs. This is a widespread concern that it is necessary to reduce the cost, possibly to the imaginary point when there is nowhere to reduce!
Practically all of us in everyday life strive to buy goods of ever better quality. When we buy something, we usually focus on the price-quality ratio, and both of these factors affect the ability of sellers to make a profit. Profit is usually invested in the development of the enterprise, it is becoming more and outliving competitors!
Every day I meet with specialists who are looking for ways to improve customer service, which is necessary to preserve the company's reputation and increase its competitiveness. With rare exceptions, these specialists simultaneously strive to reduce the cost of maintenance. And this is only the change that occurred during my 10 years in the contact center industry (and plus 30 years in the field of information technology) - cost reduction is accelerating.
In the past 10 years, the contact center industry has experienced varying success with changes from SOA, BPM, cloud technologies, speech analysis, screen recording, IVR, unified communications, WFO, etc. Although all of these technologies were being introduced, millions of dollars were spent on improving contact center performance, why do industry leaders still see a lack of efficiency?
')
Specialists in the field of information technology and business have always helped the market, introducing innovative solutions and efficient technologies, and I see a widespread increase in activity in this area. So, what do they see and where will they direct their efforts in 2015 and beyond?
Everything is simple, it is transformation and simplification through automation. Automation is the key for executives, allowing them to fulfill their promises to shareholders to increase profits. Automation is the key to a quick return on investment, to improved customer service and at the same time reducing costs. There are many types of automation.
Automation of business processes. This term is becoming ubiquitous for large projects, but it is also effective when used as part of small projects.
Robotization. This technology takes what a person enters from the keyboard and performs it with a programmable robot. This is effective because it does not change any parts of the process or application, as well as accepted business rules, but automates many keystrokes, mouse clicks and non-modifying actions previously performed by humans. New technologies make it better by replacing outdated screen data analysis.
Robotization allows you to perform processes much faster, but this is not always important. Even if this is performed at the same speed as a person can, it still makes sense to use robots (virtual machines) if you want to increase your hourly productivity!
Automation of the workplace. This type of automation is similar to robotization, but it does not replace a person, but helps him with his computer. This is a key step in processes that do not require human participation. Again, this does not change the applications used, does not require a census of applications, and the existing business logic remains 100% unchanged. Operators are still involved in working with clients - this is something that has not yet been automated.
Automation is not new in the field of information technology or business, but what is new is the quality of the products on the market and the success it has brought to the organizations involved in customer service. This approach has been used by many contact centers in the world, and automation has provided a significant increase in productivity. It is known that many experts have built a successful career, introducing automation in the industry.
Automation is a good solution because it solves the problems of both the contact center and the back office. "How to make a profit without any special expenses and not spend years on it?" Automation is a logical decision, because when you look at the work of contact center operators of back office employees, you realize that a computer performs many functions that were previously performed by people. You do not need to be an expert in rocket technology (or have a black belt using the Six Sigma system) to look over someone’s shoulder and say: “Why did you enter this data twice?” Or “Why are you trying to sell an inappropriate product?”.
Automation scales easily. You can start automation with half a dozen obvious processes, such as: “Automatic registration”, “Single sign-on”, “Ordering in real time”, “Automatic update”, and move to more complex automation, which will provide integrated reviews, Smart workplace, computer telephony integration, process management, hot connections, etc. In the future, you can automate everything you can, and immediately get the benefit and save time.
The key difference between automation and other “integrations” or cost reduction strategies is that these other strategies usually do not bring profit until the project is fully completed, and, as a result, it is sometimes too late to correct errors. Automation allows you to quickly return on investment, its consequences are obvious and predictable, and you quickly get what you expect.
Last but not least, automation goes hand-in-hand with reducing errors from the moment you automate part of the operator’s actions, which reduces his workload when serving the customer. This can play a key role in solving particularly complex problems that may arise during manual call processing.
In fact, contact center specialists have been striving to improve efficiency for many years, but, being favored by information technologies, I note: only recently have there been ways to effectively solve many problems. And these new technologies do not stand in the way of progress, but, on the contrary, accelerate it.
So, innovative technologies are needed for contact centers. The last question suggests itself: “Does it really work?” The answer is unconditional: “Yes.” For many years, automation was out of sight, until its usefulness and necessity became apparent. And now it is widely used. From a small contact center for 150 operators, to a large distributed contact center with 35,000 operators, automation of workplaces is a catalyst for the transformation process leading to the achievement of world-class customer service. Large or small, any successful contact center uses a combination of business process automation, robotization, and workstations.
Managers and specialists of contact centers are under constant pressure due to problems related to improving the quality of customer service and reducing the cost of this process. This situation should not lead to the death of the contact center. Armed with modern automation technology and a comprehensive deployment plan, the contact center will eventually achieve optimal efficiency.
Practically all of us in everyday life strive to buy goods of ever better quality. When we buy something, we usually focus on the price-quality ratio, and both of these factors affect the ability of sellers to make a profit. Profit is usually invested in the development of the enterprise, it is becoming more and outliving competitors!
Every day I meet with specialists who are looking for ways to improve customer service, which is necessary to preserve the company's reputation and increase its competitiveness. With rare exceptions, these specialists simultaneously strive to reduce the cost of maintenance. And this is only the change that occurred during my 10 years in the contact center industry (and plus 30 years in the field of information technology) - cost reduction is accelerating.
In the past 10 years, the contact center industry has experienced varying success with changes from SOA, BPM, cloud technologies, speech analysis, screen recording, IVR, unified communications, WFO, etc. Although all of these technologies were being introduced, millions of dollars were spent on improving contact center performance, why do industry leaders still see a lack of efficiency?
')
Specialists in the field of information technology and business have always helped the market, introducing innovative solutions and efficient technologies, and I see a widespread increase in activity in this area. So, what do they see and where will they direct their efforts in 2015 and beyond?
Automation, automation and automation
Everything is simple, it is transformation and simplification through automation. Automation is the key for executives, allowing them to fulfill their promises to shareholders to increase profits. Automation is the key to a quick return on investment, to improved customer service and at the same time reducing costs. There are many types of automation.
Automation of business processes. This term is becoming ubiquitous for large projects, but it is also effective when used as part of small projects.
Robotization. This technology takes what a person enters from the keyboard and performs it with a programmable robot. This is effective because it does not change any parts of the process or application, as well as accepted business rules, but automates many keystrokes, mouse clicks and non-modifying actions previously performed by humans. New technologies make it better by replacing outdated screen data analysis.
Robotization allows you to perform processes much faster, but this is not always important. Even if this is performed at the same speed as a person can, it still makes sense to use robots (virtual machines) if you want to increase your hourly productivity!
Automation of the workplace. This type of automation is similar to robotization, but it does not replace a person, but helps him with his computer. This is a key step in processes that do not require human participation. Again, this does not change the applications used, does not require a census of applications, and the existing business logic remains 100% unchanged. Operators are still involved in working with clients - this is something that has not yet been automated.
Automation is not new in the field of information technology or business, but what is new is the quality of the products on the market and the success it has brought to the organizations involved in customer service. This approach has been used by many contact centers in the world, and automation has provided a significant increase in productivity. It is known that many experts have built a successful career, introducing automation in the industry.
Automation is a good solution because it solves the problems of both the contact center and the back office. "How to make a profit without any special expenses and not spend years on it?" Automation is a logical decision, because when you look at the work of contact center operators of back office employees, you realize that a computer performs many functions that were previously performed by people. You do not need to be an expert in rocket technology (or have a black belt using the Six Sigma system) to look over someone’s shoulder and say: “Why did you enter this data twice?” Or “Why are you trying to sell an inappropriate product?”.
Automation scales easily. You can start automation with half a dozen obvious processes, such as: “Automatic registration”, “Single sign-on”, “Ordering in real time”, “Automatic update”, and move to more complex automation, which will provide integrated reviews, Smart workplace, computer telephony integration, process management, hot connections, etc. In the future, you can automate everything you can, and immediately get the benefit and save time.
The key difference between automation and other “integrations” or cost reduction strategies is that these other strategies usually do not bring profit until the project is fully completed, and, as a result, it is sometimes too late to correct errors. Automation allows you to quickly return on investment, its consequences are obvious and predictable, and you quickly get what you expect.
Last but not least, automation goes hand-in-hand with reducing errors from the moment you automate part of the operator’s actions, which reduces his workload when serving the customer. This can play a key role in solving particularly complex problems that may arise during manual call processing.
In fact, contact center specialists have been striving to improve efficiency for many years, but, being favored by information technologies, I note: only recently have there been ways to effectively solve many problems. And these new technologies do not stand in the way of progress, but, on the contrary, accelerate it.
So, innovative technologies are needed for contact centers. The last question suggests itself: “Does it really work?” The answer is unconditional: “Yes.” For many years, automation was out of sight, until its usefulness and necessity became apparent. And now it is widely used. From a small contact center for 150 operators, to a large distributed contact center with 35,000 operators, automation of workplaces is a catalyst for the transformation process leading to the achievement of world-class customer service. Large or small, any successful contact center uses a combination of business process automation, robotization, and workstations.
Managers and specialists of contact centers are under constant pressure due to problems related to improving the quality of customer service and reducing the cost of this process. This situation should not lead to the death of the contact center. Armed with modern automation technology and a comprehensive deployment plan, the contact center will eventually achieve optimal efficiency.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/250959/
All Articles