3 Call Center Trends That Will Make Your Customers Smile In 2020

In today’s highly competitive business environment, providing consistent and memorable customer experiences may be the most important way for brands to differentiate themselves. Call centers are at the heart of many of these customer experience (CX) initiatives. Unfortunately, the double whammy of ever-advancing technology and constantly evolving customer expectations mean that call centers can’t rely on what worked last year when it comes to turning above-and-beyond customer experiences into an everyday occurrence. If you’ve been asking what your call center needs to stay ahead of the CX curve for 2020, these three trends are the answer.

Call Center Trend #1: Use Analytics To Predict Your Customer’s Needs

A good customer experience is one that feels natural, easy and emotionally rewarding at every stage in the journey from stranger to advocate. But how do we determine what different customers are looking for at each of these stages?

Gone are the days when a quick boardroom poll or chat with the sales guys was enough. Today, such strategic decisions should be driven by data, collected across multiple channels. This data shouldn’t simply help us understand what is, but help us predict what is needed next, so we can anticipate and personalize customer interactions.

According to an article on advanced analytics and call centers published by McKinsey, this approach, called predictive analytics, has resulted in reduced costs, increased revenue, better employee engagement and higher customer satisfaction scores.

How to make analytics work in your call center:

1. Find a way to integrate data across silos in your organization and across your different data collection platforms so you can see the customer’s journey as a whole.
2. Develop a strategy so you know what data is important and can avoid analysis paralysis.
3. Ensure there’s a feedback loop so your data is used to improve your call center processes.

Call Center Trend #2: Offer Superior Digital And Self-Serve CX

Gen Z and millennial customers—the digital DIYers—prefer to solve problems themselves. They don’t want to wait on hold only to be disappointed by an unsatisfactory response or get passed to someone else.

This generational shift away from human-to-human interaction has led many to predict the death of the center. A late 2018 Forbes article tackled this topic, citing IBM’s stat that by 2020, 85 per cent of all service interactions will take place without the help of a human.

Research by Frost & Sullivan shows that mid-sized callers are embracing this digital-first trend without reservation. Ninety-five per cent of North American respondents to their 2018 survey said they currently support web-based customer interactions, including chat and forums, followed by email (93 per cent), interactive voice response (91 per cent), social media (81 per cent) and mobile self-service (73 per cent). Live agent voice interaction came in sixth place, with 65 per cent of mid-sized call centers offering it in 2018.

How to make digital-first work in your call center:

1. Make sure your call center offers a consistent and frictionless experience across all channels: web, social, chat, email, live voice and more. Customers should feel like the next channel picks up exactly where the last one left off.
2. Implement mobile-first and web accessibility programs to meet the needs of all users, regardless of device or ability.
3. Encourage customer contact, rather than working to decrease interactions.
4. Use self-service as the approach of choice at the beginning of the customer journey and use highly skilled available-anytime human agents to seamlessly take over when needed.

Call Center Trend #3: Use A Remote Team

Today’s businesses must balance the need to reduce costs with the need to enhance customer experiences. At first glance, these two needs seem to be in conflict with one another. Fortunately, cloud-based technology makes it possible to do both at once in the shape of a remote (or virtual) call center.

We covered the benefits of a remote team in a recent article. Among the top advantages are cost savings, access to a global talent pool, 24/7/365 agent availability, increased agent satisfaction and happier customers.

How to make a remote call center work for you:

1. Choose the right software. A virtual call center lives or dies on the software tools that keep the team connected to customers and each other.
2. Ensure you have a rigorous security network with encryption to keep data safe.
3. Hire the right team and train them for success.
4. Use analytics (trend #1) and a digital-first approach (trend #2) to enhance customer experience in a remote call center context.
5. Consider using a third-party to set up and manage your remote team.

So there you have it: three call center trends for 2020, with specific tips on how you can implement them in your organization. First, act on the customer journey data you collect across your organization. Second, integrate digital and self-serve customer experience approaches with live agent approaches in a way that feels effortless to the customer. And third, harness the power of remote call centers. Implement these approaches and you’ll be on the leading edge of the industry and poised to save money, increase productivity and improve CX.

We can already see those smiling customers’ faces.

LiveXchange makes it easy to start and operate your own remote customer contact center, with the technology, security, and HR tools and know-how to create consistently amazing customer experiences.

Tracy Carter

Tracy Carter has helped many companies deploy and optimize their workforce with thousands of home agents, providing top quality remote brand ambassadors across the United States and Canada for Rogers, Today’s Shopping Choice, Xperigo, L’Oreal, ClubLink, Pizza Hut, KFC and many more.

With over 12 years of experience at LiveXchange in business process outsourcing services and homesourcing SaaS technology solutions, Tracy’s approach is to provide collaborative solutions with measurable revenue growth and operating cost savings – helping you grow your business with superior customer experiences!

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About LiveXchange

A remote contact center solutions company helping you grow your business and deliver customer service excellence. Our PCI certified home agent model and workforce management systems provide top quality outsourcing services, or the technology and tools to successfully develop and operate your own remote workforce.

With a 150,000 strong agent workforce, we specialize in recruiting and managing robust talent. Our remote enabling technology can reduce operating costs by 25% while increasing productivity results.