knowledge executive report "contact center technology trends"

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Page 1: Knowledge Executive Report "Contact Center technology trends"

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Page 2: Knowledge Executive Report "Contact Center technology trends"

Technology

Technology providers to the contact

centre industry have identified multiple

technology trends that are expected

to radically alter the way the industry

operates. Contact centres and BPO

organisations will increasingly use

technology to enable their businesses

to provide cutting-edge services and

solutions in an omni-channel, multi-

complex, customer focused world.

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The contact centre continues to evolve rapidly as the business behind it - and the customers in front of it - continue to change. Technology is the key driver behind this change. There are an increasing number of ways for customers to communicate with a centre, and each communication technology carries its own challenges and benefits. Moreover, an increasing complexity in terms of products and services is coupled with a growing focus on the customer experience.

For one, the growth of multi-channel contact centres that incorporate social media, instant messaging and video chat as methods of communication is increasing the complexity at the heart of contact centre interactions with customers.

In addition, big data and the risk posed by information overload is an issue that will continue to increase. Fortunately,

Technology

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tools for dealing with and analysing large volumes of data effectively are also expected to proliferate, which will – it is hoped - make it easier to manage the rapidly-multiplying number of customer touch-points.

Of course, the most potent antidote to all of this added complexity is not actually a technological solution. It is, rather, the need for contact centres to remain focused on the real purpose of customer interactions, namely to offer a truly great customer experience.

Knowledge Executive surveyed leading technology providers to get their outlook for the next two years with regards to technololgy enablers for the business process outsourcing, offshoring, services and contact centre industry. They included:

▪ Dimension Data (DiData) ▪ Interactive Intelligence ▪ Inter-Active Technologies ▪ Inovo Telecom ▪ Jasco ▪ Ninzi-Connect ▪ Ocular Technologies ▪ Presence Technology

According to a recent Deloitte survey 62% of organisations view customer experience provided through contact centres as a competitive differentiator and 82% recognised ‘accuracy and quality of information’ as the most important customer experience attribute.

It is also worth noting that as more people begin to utilise smartphones, which grant them instant access to the

Technology is the key driver behind this change.

There are an increasing number of ways for

customers to communicate with a contact

centre, and each communication technology

carries its own challenges and benefits.

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Internet, we will see this increased level of accessibility creating a new generation of customer.

These customers – dubbed ‘monster customers’ – will not only expect a 24/7 customer service experience, but will also have the power to Tweet, potentially causing a public relations nightmare, should their demands not be met. It seems inevitable then, that as the smartphone generation ages, the way that customers interact with businesses will continue to change and grow. Advances in technology will therefore be continuously required in the contact centre space in order to deal with this evolution.

The question, then, is how are the technology providers to this sector dealing with this rapid evolution in both the business approach to its customers and the customer interactions with the business?

Trendy technologies, technology trends

To stay on top of what is a rapidly evolving industry sector, these technology providers need to closely follow trends and implement or develop technologies that allow them to remain at the forefront of their chosen market.

According to Inovo Telecom, probably the most critical current trend in this space is that of the hosted contact centre. The company has found an increasing number of its customers opting for hosted solutions. Naturally, adopting a hosted model not only has an impact on the type of technology used by the centre, but also on its location. In other words, a hosted model now enables a company to provide a contact centre service outside of the main metropolitan areas. Another key trend to consider is the growing desire for multi-channel contact centres. The difficulty with these is being able to guarantee the service levels, regardless of the channel used by the customer.

The third trend that is worth considering, according to Inovo, is that of business intelligence (BI). At the operational level, contact centres are beginning to challenge the norm around what is deemed to be the criteria for success. In the past,

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success was generally judged by adherence to the service level agreements (SLAs), but this fails to dig deeper into what is happening at the centre.

By investing in supplementary technologies that can provide better analytics and BI, contact centres will be able to delve further into specifics within a centre and thereby more easily improve customer service and reduce the cost of service. Inovo points out that this is something that the vast majority of its clients are asking for – the kind of BI and analytics tools that will enable them to make better decisions around operational changes that can, in turn, improve how they deal with their customers.

Niche provider Ninzi-Connect agrees that analytics is important, although the company feels the most important aspect to this is what it refers to as ‘mining the gap’. This is when the focus of analysis is not only placed on the telephony component, but also on what an agent is doing with the rest of their time at work.

It is all about improving efficiency and productivity, but can equally be used as a means of reducing fraud. By using analytics to determine what agents are doing when they are not on calls, the company can reduce the amount of time that is spent on things other than calls, thereby generating more revenue. This, in turn, should lead to process improvements which increase productivity.

The other trend the company considers important is the merging of various delivery platforms, such as the collections industry merging interactive voice recognition (IVR) software with outbound diallers. In this way, the debtor receives an automatic notification in a natural - rather than synthesised – voice, that explains to the customer the options regarding payment of the bill or settling of the debt, and can then offer them the option of being put through to an agent to arrange the payment.

By moving to automated systems, says Ninzi, companies can save an enormous amount of money. For example, a 600 seat contact centre that is able to automate just half of its outbound calls will save an incredible amount on agent expenses alone – and utilise agent resources in more meaningful and beneficial ways.

Technology

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Social, multimedia and the cloud

Presence Technology is of the opinion that the most important current trend is that of the cloud-based contact centre, as this delivers advantages that fit well with the current emphasis by business to ‘do more with less’. This includes the ability to choose how, when and where to implement the contact centre infrastructure.

In addition, the contact centre as a service (CCaaS) model is fast becoming an industry standard and is undoubtedly going to impact the way that BPO and contact centre businesses operate. Currently, hosted technology is the norm, rather than the exception to the rule, although this does not mean that all providers are delivering the service and technology equally well. Success for a client in this arena, says Presence, will definitely be determined by choosing the right delivery partner.Inter-Active Technologies feels, however, that what is probably the single biggest trend which companies need to be aware of today is the growing need for multimedia and multi-channel management. The traditional channel has always been voice, so the contact centre has been about queuing and prioritising voice traffic. However, the increasing number of channels open to customers – from chat to email to Web self-service to SMS – has meant an increasing range of interactions being funnelled into the centre, all of which still need to be treated in a queue.

The tools that will be utilised to ensure this happens are where Inter-Active expects to see the real big changes taking place as things move forward. The impact on contact centre businesses will lie in how these tools will have to be shaped to be effective. For example, do you choose to treat a customer service call with the same urgency as a tweet railing against the organisation? Clever use of technology will enable the choice between customer service and damage control to be made quite simply.

In our research, Knowledge Executive found that another big trend under the spotlight is the discussion around the virtual contact centre and how this will be managed. The software and services necessary for home agents to be effective, along with the growth of the cloud are all

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challenges the industry will need to address going forward, and yet some local outsourcers are already deploying work-at-home agents. Of course, technology will provide the answers to these challenges, so there is little doubt that big technology changes in the hosted space should be expected in the near future.

Looking at the trends issue from a different angle, Ocular Technologies points out that it is interesting to note that in South Africa, consumer interest in using social media as a contact platform seems to be tapering off. This is a very different approach to the rest of the globe, with the US market in particular using it more than most other channels.

Social media appears to be misunderstood in a lot of ways, according to Ocular, as contact centres too have failed to use it to the best of their ability. Very few utilise it as an arm of a broader campaign run through the centre, which is one of the aspects it is perfect for.

In addition, most companies seem to not consider the value of social media as a contact channel. This means that, for example, when a customer tweets about bad service, these comments are channelled to the marketing department, where they should ideally be channelled to the contact centre, which is set up to deal with customer complaints.

That is not to say that the technology to do this does not exist, it is simply a lack of understanding with regard to how best to utilise and deal with social media in relation to the contact centre.

Of course, adds Ocular, should a company look to channel such social media issues into the contact centre, it will need to have agents that have specific skills to deal with this environment. For example, they will need to be able to type quickly, to provide relevant responses in a 140-character format, and most crucially of all, understand the immediacy of the channel.

Risky business

However, social media as a channel for the contact centre, along with many of the other trends outlined above, is only as good as the connectivity available to the contact centre,

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meaning that connectivity – although it is improving all the time – is the single biggest challenge facing modern contact centres, as it is still not as reliable as such entities would like – a key challenge Knowledge Executive found is affecting all BPO/contact centres.

Inter-Active is even more pragmatic, highlighting infrastructural risk as the biggest challenge to the industry. According to the company, electricity failure can easily compromise even the best contact centre business, so the state of the South African national electricity grid infrastructure is clearly a massive risk.

An additional risk is around the skills required for the deployment of technology. While the technology itself is world-class and SA is very rich in regard to contact centre technology, there remains a lack of implementation skills in the country. And this is clearly a problem, since the best tools in the world are useless without the right people to operate them.

Furthermore, BPO businesses must comply with current laws and legislation regarding the protection of personal information by making sure all their operations are compliant, says Presence. This means that contact centre administrators and supervisors must have the proper tools to monitor, audit and analyse detailed information across all activities. Another risk is when the contact centre solution deployed is not flexible enough to adapt the system fast enough to meet market-changes. The reality of some multi-channel implementations shows how many times reality doesn´t meet expectations when it comes to speed of service, or when consumers are not served as they expected. This represents revenue and opportunity losses.

The concept of reports is dead: historic

information is simply not useful enough

anymore - real-time information is the

only path to success - especially when you

look at it from the customer perspective.

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Looking after the customer

The vast majority of recent contact centre business challenges, it seems, have revolved around improving the customer experience. There is a lot of talk around first call resolution and customer delight, but these are often misnomers, according to Inter-Active.

While companies may have the best of intentions around service, too many contact centres seem to operate from the perspective of telling the customer how they should behave when they call, rather than listening to what the customer expects, and this needs to change if the industry is to succeed.

What is needed is for the industry to use the tools available to it to enable it to spend more time listening to customer conversations in detail. We can no longer afford to merely sample 10% or 12% of our calls and expect to have a realistic understanding of how we are dealing with the customer.

Moreover, successful contact centres need to be listening to at least 80% to 90% of the contacts being made, and this needs to be done in real-time, if it is to make a genuine difference, which means making use of a range of analytics tools.

The concept of reports is dead: historic information is simply not useful enough anymore - real-time information is the only path to success. After all, when you look at it from the customer perspective, they are no longer sending letters of complaint to the business. Instead they are delivering a real-time pummelling via social media. Therefore, it is equally critical that the organisation is able to be just as rapid in its responses.

Other developments

Presence points to remote support or remote service as a development that is expected to play an important role in the near future. This will occur thanks to the evolution of cloud-based platforms, the adoption of tele-working and the distributed locations of customer service. Ultimately, this is a development that will directly impact on a company’s efficiency, deployment, speed and ability to provide more accessible support, thereby reducing costs.

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Inter-Active, on the other hand, suggests that while remote support will definitely grow, it will be more as part of a hosted contact centre, rather than as genuine home agents. For example, a company would be able to invest in a community centre in an area where there is high unemployment and thus provide jobs to the community, who will be able to operate as agents from this centre, with the technology all supplied via the cloud. In this way, hardware costs are minimised, while the sense of community that exists within contact centres remains, simply by taking the facility to the workforce instead of the other way around. According to Inovo, the real key development will be when contact centres are able to move beyond the current focus on having a single view of the customer, and develop one that encompasses a single view across products, business units and departments, ultimately providing a single view of the customer’s interactional experience with the entire organisation. As far as applications development goes, Ocular says that not much of this is happening in SA – instead, the majority of contact centre apps are developed in the overseas markets. However, apps integration is really strong in South Africa, with Ocular itself involved in a number of such processes, particularly for those clients that have technologies from multiple vendors and need to make all of these work in an integrated fashion.

According to Ninzi, a further development that has not been noticed as much, but which is having a profound impact is that of the uptake of broadband access solutions. Broadband delivers the ability to have a central system and then fully deploy voice and data almost anywhere across the continent, which is a huge change from the recent past. For example, five years ago a financial services organisation that had operations in several African countries would have had a head office in each of these nations. Today, it is possible to run a continent-wide operation from a single operations centre in one country, thanks to broadband.

New services

Technology providers inevitably seek to create new products and services to assist their customers, with Inter-Active pointing out that its latest arena of exploration is in the database and data ownership space. The company is

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looking to develop tools that allow for a more paperless-type environment to appear. As an example, the company suggests that when one traditionally goes to the hospital, there are many forms to fill in first, as there are with home loans or in the credit environment. What Inter-Active is seeking to do is automate such forms and thus reduce the repeated need to fill such forms in.

In addition, analytics and knowledge management are high on the agenda, as building knowledge base about a specific customer and enabling this database to provide intelligence around the customer means that it becomes possible to aggregate all the data available in the social, Web and work arenas, in order to better trend the customer lifestyle and thus service them better. Inovo also points to managed services and virtualisation as being important services today. The inherent advantage of a managed or hosted environment is the ability to access all the apps from anywhere. This means it is just as easy to enable work-at-home agents, allowing companies in turn to decentralise their operations from the major metropolitan areas.

In other words, a better or lower cost of service can be achieved. For example, one can decentralise a contact centre to a region where a specific language, such as Xhosa or Afrikaans is predominantly spoken, thereby improving your customer service to all customers who speak that particular language.

Analysis and demand

Based on our research, most technologists remain adamant that the next ‘big thing’ will be analytics, and particularly hosted analytics. Hosted is expected to be particularly big, because organisations today don’t want to spend the time, effort and money required to do it themselves when they can instead pay someone else to do it for them. This is true of many hosted offerings, but is especially vital in terms of analytics, because this is a specialist role that requires experts to do it properly.

Ocular adds that cloud computing will also continue to grow in importance as we move forward. While on-premise contact centre solutions should remain the norm, the cloud will increasingly be utilised for peripherals, as well as for reporting,

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analytics, quality assurance and workforce management. Another trend Knowledge Executive has identified is the one veering towards contact centre on demand (CCoD). Cost savings are seen as the big differentiator between the CCoD and other solutions. This service model offers companies a flexible technology solution that allows them to differentiate themselves from the competition by improving the quality of their customer service without incurring high technical complexities or strong investments.

The functional modularity of the offering allows it to quickly cover all the needs of a contact centre, from launching sales campaigns, loyalty programmes, recovery, monitoring and post-sales support quickly with inclusive call recording, automation and contact and customer experience analysis. These solutions will allow a faster deployment which will have a direct impact on costs, efficiency and operations. Presence says solutions such as these also provide detailed reports on the services and generate sales arguments easily without turning to technical resources, as well as solving administrative tasks by the agents attending each contact using any channel (multi-channel): voice, email, Web chat, social network, etc. Finally, it facilitates best in breed technology access for a period without huge investment.

“Advances in contact centre solutions..” says Presence “..are going to be much related with the trends that mobility and teleworking are offering. Virtualisation will be another successful element for the contact centre infrastructure because of the ability to deploy high-value solutions to provide redundancy, high-availability and security, as a key piece of technology that impact directly in the company’s results.”

Innovating for the future

Innovation is a factor that determines the success of the services offered from the contact centre, since it must allow adaptation to the habits and trends that customers demand. If contact centres are unable to provide the expected customer experience, they will in all likelihood lose business to those that can. From the research conducted by Knowledge Executive, there is no doubt that social media is going to grow in importance to the industry, but to enable social networks as a successful communication channel, contact centres need to focus on processes and people, rather than technology. They

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also need to avoid the mistake of having silos of information per channel, says Presence. This can be done by having a repository of contact details for social networks and others dealing with other channels (voice, Web chat, etc).

Ocular reminds us that although innovation in the apps development space doesn’t really exist in SA – because apps development exists mostly in the more developed nations - what these players are doing with these foreign-developed apps is so incredible that there is little doubt that locally, developers will take note and begin to innovate around the building and developing of apps for the SA market in the near future. Inovo adds that for a long time, contact centres have considered it the responsibility of technology to solve their problems. This is not, however, the case, as technology is merely an enabler.

The key to success lies in constantly performing gap analyses, in order to discover potential opportunities for improvement – such as multiskilling, training or multi-channel self-service - and then to prioritise this in terms of its importance to the business.

Technology providers too, need to offer more than just high quality technology, but must actually be able to offer business acumen and operational skills when it comes to implementing the technology and helping customers to make their business work better.

By assisting with the customer’s business processes, for example, the provider can empower the customer in a partnership that assists them in implementing a cycle of continuous transformation, optimisation and innovation, thereby ensuring they are able to stay ahead of their competition. It is no longer just about providing technology to enable the client to optimise their business, but rather to assist them with the actual enablement process.

The way ahead

The future for contact centres is bright, since there is so much fantastic technology available. Of course, while South Africa is very rich in terms of the actual technology required to take this sector to the next level, skills development is something the sector as a whole needs to make a serious effort to

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encourage. After all, the technology alone is not enough – you can have the best scalpel on the market, but without a steady and skilled hand guiding it, it will not be effective.

The future also holds some interesting new innovations for contact centres, such as the expectation of much stronger multimedia content. While this is already popular, it remains in its infancy in SA. It is also expected that contact centres become more professional in how people are managed and developed. This is because being an agent is no longer just a stepping stone to a future career, but is being viewed more as a career in its own right.

Finally, it also seems to be a consensus that it will not be long until at least 20% of contact centres will have migrated to a cloud environment. This, along with the massive growth in social media will ultimately mean the entire organisation – as opposed to merely the contact centre itself - will become part of the customer service strategy, and should see contact centres continue to grow in importance within the organisation for the foreseeable future.

New approaches

The contact centre space in South Africa has changed dramatically in the past few years, as the country has moved away from being a monopoly market that was used to poor connectivity and high prices.

Today, however, connectivity is exceptionally good, thanks to massive fibre networks and new undersea cables. Furthermore, continuing developments in technology mean that it is now genuinely becoming an enabler, meaning that contact centres can now truly focus on what they do best, which is servicing customers.

Jasco indicates that the biggest quandary lies in how best to manage interactive voice recognition (IVR) and other voice-based technologies. Nonetheless, we are witnessing a greater uptake in IVR and also an

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increased maturity in the manner in which it is used. While in SA, the language issue is a challenge, more people friendly designs are coming through.

Dimension Data points out that while the concept of self-help is great, the real challenge lies in solving the integration issues that arise between different channels – too often, if a customer chooses a self-help option and finds they need assistance, they have to start the entire process again. Better integration will solve this challenge.

Another challenge facing IVR technologies is the simple fact that Generation Z customers actually have a problem in talking to people, says Neotel, as they are used to communicating via mobile devices. These customers would in all likelihood prefer to use a Web application than a voice-related channel.

While these people tend to be happy with a self-service option, they avoid voice, preferring to communicate online. At the same time, there are older customers who hate self-service and would rather speak to a real person. This means that it is difficult even matching agents to a specific demographic, let alone to specific technologies like IVR.

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The ‘Smart’ Contact Centre

A smart BPO/contact centre must be able to provide:

▪ Simplicity - to manage relationships and increase productivity.

▪ Flexibility - to adapt quickly to market and business changes.

▪ Consistency in its information - to provide a 360° vision of the customer relationship.

▪ Multi-channel - to provide contact management in a transparent way to the customer and the agent and ensure this is unified across different means and devices.

▪ Automation - of processes where the work of the agent provides less value.

▪ Monitoring and reporting information with accurate data and providing value to business.

▪ Innovation - to ensure no time or money is lost on things that are not going to be used.

▪ Profitability, cost control and improved return of investment (ROI).

All of the above can be achieved by having efficient processes, an easy, modular and efficient technology, and a team of agents that are well trained and highly motivated.

Inter-Active Technologies adds that another global trend is the move towards remote agents and agents working from home. Given the challenges around transport in SA, this trend would be ideal for contact centres to adopt, even though connectivity in certain areas could prove challenging.

Jasco highlights the fact that what is really holding back the adoption of remote agents in SA is archaic management practices. Too many managers still want to manage workers that they can see, so it will take time to reach the maturity level required to make this work.

The other challenge lies in creating the same kind of ‘buzz’ that exists in a good physical contact centre. While it is possible and has been achieved in centres overseas, it is not easy and as a nation, Jasco feels SA still has some way to go to reach this stage.

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We all want options. This is especially true for your customers. Options — letting your customers interact with you the

way they want to, when they want to, from wherever they want to. That’s where multichannel communications comes

in. Interactive Intelligence gives you the ability to route, monitor, record, and report on all media types – voice, email,

web chat, fax, SMS, and social media. All-in-one. That way, your customers get choices and a consistent service

experience across all channels, and you get a distinct advantage over your competition.

www.inin.com/za

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