The contact center is not a new concept. Multi-channel contact centers have been around for years, and they’ve become innovation powerhouses for the customer experience with the technologies they leverage:
VoIP, SIP and integrated all-in-one platforms for communications applications, business applications, back-end systems, eServices and business rules— culminating in the multimedia choices and self-service options customers insist on.
Inventive technologies also have led to supervisory tools like whisper coaching and screen recording to improve agent effectiveness, automated survey applications to measure customer satisfaction levels, and remote capability to capitalize on the merits of at-home agents.
For contact management, each facet of innovation serves a valuable purpose… and delivers quantifiable results. Yet with these new technologies now firmly in the mainstream, many contact centers still find themselves behind the implementation curve. And for centers already realizing the value of new thinking? Even they’ll tell you a competitive edge is an ongoing challenge.
The “Intelligent” Contact Center
Where do contact centers go next to get an advantage? They’ll need to view their operation in a more “intelligent” way. The Intelligent Contact Center is the next phase in an ongoing evolution of the traditional contact center— a phase that stands to provide significant benefits to those companies that embrace it.
Consider the leading-edge technology available today, and it’s an evolution that is rapidly moving forward. However, there’s still much more to come in the build-out of the Intelligent Contact Center—and in the dramatic role it will play to further enhance an agent’s effectiveness, ensure a superior service outcome for customers, and increase revenue generated by the contact center itself.
Intelligence defined
In its full implementation, the Intelligent Contact Center will leverage technology to dynamically create and drive an interaction with the customer. To make the interaction process itself more intelligent. Instead of relying on an agent to access the right customer history and information—which is often unavailable, unlocatable, or so immense that it can’t be processed in a timely fashion—technology will automate the data mining process. Also rather than forcing the agent to rely on training that many times is insufficient, the same technology will automate a process that instructs the agent on what action to execute based on a customer’s service request and associated data.
Set your radar on emerging technologies
The next step is to set your radar on emerging technologies that will build on the ones you’re currently using. For instance, applications that offer more intelligent scripting tools, and technologies that employ multiple language-based search modes to quickly locate and retrieve a customer’s data. Ultimately, the difference between the Intelligent Contact Center and an ordinary one is its organizational contribution as a profit center. And the bottom-line value of any profit center depends on how well it integrates new innovations.
A glimpse of what’s to come
As technology continues evolving to make interaction management processes more intelligent, the Intelligent Contact Center will pave a more “personal” course of service for each customer. For example in conjunction with a call or Web chat, new solutions will: Capture multiple aspects of the customer’s information, analyze it, and initiate specific analysis-based actions that guide an agent to manage the interaction more effectively.
- Execute rule-based actions within an IVR application to confirm a caller and verify an account record. Thereafter, the same application will present service options and product info tailored to that customer, route the interaction to a particular IVR menu or workgroup, and so forth.
- Employ customer profile factors to supplement account records with a customer’s stated preferences, buying patterns, and whether the person accepted or declined past offers. Factors will also include geographic, cultural and other considerations that can impact a purchasing decision.
A closer view of the future
World-class service should be every contact center’s ongoing objective, and the Intelligent Contact Center will take service processes to much higher levels for customers, agents and supervisors alike. Just imagine these intelligence-based scenarios. Exceptions for preferred customers: It’s a sticky problem. A customer wants to replace a defective item, but the warranty period has expired. How best to proceed?
