In today’s modern business environment the digital transformation has reshaped the global economy through artificial intelligence and cloud-based platforms that enable customers to communicate with businesses in a real time basis. This new way forward has forced traditional call centers to overhaul their legacy call center systems in order to remain competitive in the global call center marketplace while maintaining customer expectations that are constantly evolving. The five challenges call centers face today include a mixture of traditional problems combined with issues associated with the digital transformation and web-based call center software.

  1. Legacy Call Centers Systems: Outdated infrastructures require ongoing maintenance and costly upgrades to support the growing needs of today’s call centers. This results in companies investing more and more in IT staffing and capital equipment expenditures on outdated technology. Continuing to support outdated call center phone systems hampers the customer experience and costs the company expensive measures to solve ongoing issues. The new cloud-based dialer technology allows for upgrades on the fly so you can expand capacity instantaneously and never have a customer get a busy signal or have a rep that can’t log in. Costs are typically variable costs based on actual usage rather than lump sum fixed costs, so you are only investing in what you are actually using.
  2. Changing Customer Expectations: With improvements in technology, customer expectations of service levels have increased. Customers expect to communicate rapidly and seamlessly. If call center agents do not properly address customer complaints in a timely manner these experiences are magnified to epic proportions within minutes across media outlets, leaving a tarnished brand and PR nightmare. Being able to answer the calls and resolve issues immediately through an integrated CRM becomes essential to a company’s success.
  3. Accurate Reporting and Analytics: This particular challenge has plagued call centers for decades. Without the proper means to calculate the success of the calls, there is no way to report and measure success. The massive amount of customer data that runs through call centers must be reported in a manner to benefit organizational performance. Often call center managers are required to submit reports to several different departments that include sales and marketing, accounting and IT. Generating accurate and consistent reporting on multiple levels becomes a painful and sometimes manual process. Being able to report performance systematically based on multiple variables is essential to a call center’s success so that performance and efficiencies can be optimized and media spend can be targeted to the most profitable segments.
  4. Agent Recruitment and Retention: One of the biggest challengesthe call center industry faces is hiring quality agents and retaining them. Top talent is key because these people are the voice and face of your company to customers. One poor choice can compromise your customer relationships and tarnish your company brand. The high agent attrition rate leaves call center managers constantly hiring which results in excessive costs associated with recurring, training and developing new teams. The low rate of employee engagement due to the repetitive and stressful nature of call center jobs is also associated with the low retention rates. Keeping agents motivated through incentives and gamification has become a key component in performance and retention efforts. Also, the flexibility of cloud based technology has allowed for a virtual work force and recruiting across the globe to find the most talented and dedicated workforce.
  5. Workforce Optimization: Predicting the level of coverage required for your call center at any given time can be costly. Understaffing leads to long customer wait times and poor service or performance while overstaffing leads to idle agents, poor efficiencies and high costs. The magic number should be determined through precise reports using real-time analytics to determine peak hours. Some call center agents are now going remote, lowering overhead costs and providing time zone flexibility by using cloud based call center operations.

The call center landscape is changing and these issues are being addressed mainly through the cloud-based call center platform. Keeping your call center current on technology is essential for meeting these challenges. With the variable costs of a cloud-based dialer, without fixed technology investments, you can afford the latest and greatest technology upgrades so your call center can meet the changing expectations and also remain TCPA compliant. New call center solutions, such as more efficient technology and better reporting, allow you to manage your business better, you can meet customer expectations and find and keep better quality employees.

To learn more about our cloud-based dialer platform and how it will enable you to avoid the challenges discussed above, contact us by clicking here.