By 2022, customer experiences will overtake prices and products that businesses are selling. If call centers are actively trying to improve customer satisfaction and boost sales, then they could start losing clients to competitors. Customer experience software and hardware can help call center agents to answer questions easier, improve their own services, and even better serve the caller’s needs overall.

The Top 5 Call Center Technology Trends

1. Artificial Intelligence- This type of software can help your call center analyze interactions to help you understand why your customers are calling in. This is done by covering multiple channels of communication in order to understand what your customers are looking for and asking. Artificial intelligence is now learning from human agents, and will be able to answer common inbound inquiries and concerns. With this system, call centers can upload pre-recorded messages, in order to help agents respond to real-life situations. There are many benefits but this, but the most important benefit is that artificial intelligence systems can handle more straight forward requests in real-time, so that way you agents will be able to focus on higher-level customer requests.
2. Big Data and Analytics- These two tools can help you study customer data to understand their concerns better. By using these two tolls, you can look at how your customers have been interacting with your business and your agents, which will impact how you deal with them in the future. For example, if most callers are interested in specific features that your products offer, then you can highlight these features more prominently and blatantly in your sales. Whether your call center is outbound or inbound, features like speech analytics will help your business and your agents to evaluate your customer support tactics and can determine how your agents’ performance is going.
3. Remote Call Centers- With the rise in remote working, call centers are now fully hiring remote agents. Why? Because there are plenty of benefits for both your business and employees. For businesses, remote agents can help to cut down the administration costs, because less is being spent on their equipment. In terms of the benefits for agents, they can work flexible hours from the comfort of their own homes, which will save money in the commute. Truly, hiring remote staff is a win-win for everyone involved. Remote centers can use call center solutions like VoIP systems or auto-dialing tools. These tools are much cheaper than the traditional call center equipment, because everything is being run through the internet and not phone lines or hardware. A predictive dialer is also a great investment for most outbound call centers because your center will be able to drop unnecessary calls, ultimately saving agents time.
4. Omnichannel Support- Most call centers have now realized that customers are starting to move away from phone communications and utilizing other channels such as messaging or social media. This is why most call centers are restructuring themselves so that they can grow with the customer’s needs. BY restructuring themselves into a multichannel call center, agents can respond to all customer requests over email, phone, social media, messaging, and more. By doing this, the speed at which agents can deal with customers’ needs increases.
5. Self-Service Channels- Giving customers the information they need in order to solve their issues themselves is one of the easiest ways to streamline your call center operations. By getting the information they need, customers can solve their problems quickly, and agents won’t have to spend the extra time needed to manage all inquiries received. For example, instead of calling up an agent for help changing a phone plan, customers could instead access a self-service website and do it themselves. It’s much quicker, and more comfortable for customers to deal with on their own.

The Top 5 Technologies to Improve Your Call Center

With all the modern forms of technology out there, here are the top five technologies your call center needs to improve all aspects of business. 

1. Interactive Voice Response, or IVR- IVR is a system that works as an automated phone system, offering pre-recorded messages that can guide customers towards the information they are searching for. As a customer calls your call center, they are presented with a set of options that they can choose, and after selecting what they are looking for, the IVR system will then route the caller, give them the needed information, or connect them to a representative. There are two key benefits that this feature offers both businesses and clients. By using this system, your customer will be able to get access to the information they are looking for without the hassle, and your agents won’t need to deal with customer inquiries that they have no experience to handle. IVR might be one of the best call center tools in order to streamline your customer service process.
2. Automatic Call Distributor- This type of system categorizes a caller and will automatically route them towards the best agent to handle each issue. This system is a combination of basic call center systems such as computer telephony integration and call routing. This is useful because knowing where to route incoming calls, will help not only agents but also customers with wait times.
3. Digital Transformation- This system will completely restructure your call centers workflow. The process includes implementing digital technology into all aspects of your business. By doing so, bringing about the fundamental changes is made easier. This system can unify all your customers data into one interface, and can also bring all communication channels together. With everything connected digitally, it’s much easier for call center managers to manage workflow effectively.
4. Cloud-Based Call Centers- As previously stated, with the rise of remote agents, call centers must rely more on cloud-based call center applications. These applications can help your business expand operations across geographical borders and time zones, all while quickly increasing your workforce by tapping into large talent pools. This software will allow you to hire talented agents across the world, who can work for your business around the clock.
5. Customer Relationship Management- Investing in CRM software is essential for businesses to keep track of all customer databases. This can assist your agents in collecting caller information and store all call logs. By being able to view this interaction history for future reference, your agents will always have the information needed to speak with customers.