For over five decades, Americans have equated “contacting customer service” with placing a phone call. Though technology continues to advance, it often seems that call center technology fails to keep pace. Automated menus are repetitive and confusing, callers are left waiting on hold for lengthy periods of time, and it often takes two or three attempts to fully resolve an issue.
“CSS has always had a strong history of success matching call center talent to great call center opportunities. We look for highly emotional intelligent individuals that are flexible with inbound and outbound call centers and can bring a great experience for the person on the other end. Due to the war for talent, we strongly recommend that our clients have competitive pay and great perks to attract the best talent!” says Sharon Pearson Tsao, CMO, Contemporary Staffing Solutions.
Given the frustration that comes with reaching out to a call center, many consumers turn to online chats, email and social media to get their issues resolved. With fewer and fewer people relying on the phone, does the future of call centers even include voice calls?
As Long as Phones Exist, So Will Call Centers
Though the preferences of consumers are shifting more towards text-based interactions, as long as phones still exist, there will be a need for customer care centers to accept phone calls. Today, nearly 75% of all customer service interactions still take place over the phone, despite the availability of text chats, social media and email customer service channels. Text-based conversations are fine for dealing with relatively simple issues and questions, but there will always be times when a human being is the only vehicle for resolving an issue.
Though chatbots are getting smarter every day, technology does not enable bots to express true empathy, to understand by a caller’s tone and inflection whether they are becoming agitated, and they lack context-based means for making advanced, independent decisions that are so often required in a customer service interaction. As long as we still have phones, there will be a need for phone-based customer service.
Call Centers Will Continue to Evolve
However, as technology continues to advance – specifically artificial intelligence – we will also continue to see a shift in the call center delivery model, moving away from phone-centric centers to full-service customer care and contact centers. Text-based, automated services are much more efficient and often more cost-effective than hiring teams to handle phones, and many customer service centers are investing in improving the effectiveness of text interactions to help funnel customers into those channels.
There has been a great deal of interest and investment in recent years to develop AI-based technology for customer care – technology that could close many of the gaps and shore up the weaknesses of basic chat technology. If automated systems can become more empathetic and can better understand the context of a customer’s question or problem, reliance on phones will be greatly reduced.
Are You Staffed for the Future of Call Centers?
If you are looking for talented agents for your customer call center who are well-versed in the technology that is changing the business, the expert recruiters at Contemporary Staffing Solutions are ready to help. We specialize in connecting call centers with fully-vetted, highly-skilled and motivated customer care talent. Contact CSS today to get started.
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