Thursday, November 13, 2014
Call Centers in the Age of Digitization
Photo Credit:
ukCWCS, Flickr Creative Commons
You might be asking yourself, “How is the call center industry going to survive in a world with ever-changing technology?” As time goes on, businesses are becoming more and more obsessed with efficiency. So much so, that they are willing to let quality customer service fall by the wayside with the usage of automated technology. However, one should never underestimate the power of the person-to-person engagement that call centers thrive on.
Customer loyalty is one of the most important goals in business and easy is the new loyalty. Customers crave convenience in their lives and as business people, we need to give it to them. Call centers are superior to automated voice response (AVR) systems in this aspect because the pre-recorded message of an automated service will have a much smaller chance of figuring out customer concerns than a real person fielding questions in real time. Call center staff members are an invaluable part of the call center experience-- they are the face and voice of your company. Often these live agents are responsible for transactions from the first point of contact all the way through a product or service purchase, and even after the transaction for support! These agents can even be a reflection of your corporate values or attitudes. So, ask yourself this, “Do you really want to leave such crucial touch points up to a machine or up to trusted employees?”
Call centers are far from becoming extinct because of the exceptional customer service opportunities that they provide. To put it simply: There are some jobs that machines are incapable of doing.