In today’s competitive climate, call centers continue to adopt new technologies and modify as per changing trends. The major objectives of implementing new technologies and trends include:

• Reduction in the cost of operations
• Enhancement in the satisfaction level of customers
• Better employee management
• Easy tracking of the quality

To ensure that all these objectives are achieved, the companies give emphasis on overall experience of customers rather than time taken to resolve the issues.

Here are some essential trends and technologies which are gaining popularity in call center domain.

1. Cloud Technology

Cost control is one of the major benefits linked to implementation of cloud technology in call center arena. The company saves costs associated with software and hardware updates along with upfront investments. Several cloud-based call center solutions also feature intelligent call monitoring which helps in improving overall quality of the process.

2. Work From Home Culture

Cloud technology discussed in above point has one more advantage to the call centers as it allows the call center agents to work from their homes. That’s not all! Even if agents shift to some other region of their country or some other location of the world, they can still continue to work with their employer using cloud technology. This will increase productivity and reduce employee turnover rate.

3. Visual IVR

Interactive voice response (IVR) has always remained an integral portion of call center operations. It is now being evolved into visual format for providing rich and satisfactory experience to the end customers. The customers can simply choose the most optimum option from the menu visible on the screen of their device. This reduces confusion among customers caused by the options of traditional telephony IVR.

4. Rise of Social Media

Social media customer support is not new for several brands which have active presence on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. But this year will witness the rise in the importance of social media monitoring in which each channel will be monitored by agents. This will ensure positive image of the brand is maintained throughout the social networks. Also, more brands will create separate profile pages dedicated mainly to resolve the customer queries. It is possibility that social media may surpass the voice calls in terms of popularity related to customer support in upcoming years.

5. Workforce Management

This software is growing in popularity as it allows the call centers to predict the future demands of agents on the basis of volume of calls and call patterns.  This software also allows analysis and monitoring to ensure that the work of the agents matches the objectives of the project.

Time management and adherence to schedule are crucial part of managing agents in call centers. Workforce management solution helps in producing work plans for employees to ensure maximum productivity.

6. Video Customer Support

Video customer support is an extraordinary upgrade to telephonic customer support. The cases of customer services are closed faster thereby enhancing the customer satisfaction levels through this technology. Agents are also able to perform upselling and cross-selling activities effectively by interacting through video chat. Watching an agent while having an interaction automatically instills trust among the customers and they can easily explain their issues. Also, the customer support agents can demonstrate the working of product which may help in clarifying the issues of the customer.

7. Bimodal Approach Will Decrease Costs

It is one essential trend which has helped the call centers to overcome the challenge linked to controlling the infrastructure costs and enhancing the efficiency levels in customer service domain.

8. Growing Vitality of Analytics

It has become part of call center operations to exploit the big data in order to predict the expectation level of customers. Desktop analytics and speech analytics are increasingly gaining importance in call centers as they help in better agent management and reduction of customer attrition respectively.

9. Voice Metrics will Become the New Normal

Using voice biometrics to authenticate the customer will decrease the substantial number of frauds and will secure the customer’s data. Also, the time taken for verification of customer will also be reduced which make sure that customers are not frustrated.

All these trends and technologies are expected to transport the Call Center Industry into new phase of customer support in a cost effective manner.