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''Contact centres should move from being technology-led to customer-centric ''

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CIOL Bureau
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In an exclusive interview with R Jai Krishna of CyberMedia News, he said that 92 per cent of customers base their opinion of a company based on their Contact Center experience, and also about implementation of technology in a scenario of changing customer relationship tactics and the significance of customer behavior intelligence mechanisms. Some excerpts:

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What is the current scenario in contact centres and where do you see the future?

Banks and Telcos have pioneered Contact centres in India and continue to do so with over 85 per cent of the market driven by them. This has improved the customer experience, as they have put customer service and technology as a differentiator in the services offered. This trend is sure to open a wider array of things, such as domestic outsourcing, which will have a cascading effect in other industries such as automotive, insurance and logistics adopting contact centre strategy.

What role does technology got to play in contact centres?

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A typical contact centre operation can be classified as offering information, transaction or grievance services, to give the end-customer a complete experience. Now, the success of a contact centre has moved away from being technology-led to customer-led services.

However, disruptive technology such as the introduction of DTMF, some years ago and now heading to IP systems should only be user-friendly. Thus the contact centres should see technology as an enabler and harness it to optimize the operations as well as to improve revenue. Hence, maintaining a good consumer experience will now have to be adopted as part of the core contact centre management.

The next generation would also be Speech recognition systems being adopted, which would considerably reduce the Opex.

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What do you suggest for contact centres to be more successful?

Worldwide contact centers are now moving their focus away from technology as an enabler now, and the emphasis is now being laid on technology and operation balance. When this is strategy is adopted, then the Opex would be considerably be reduced on one side. And to achieve this, the contact centres will have to put in place strategy to understand the consumer behavior, which is now at an all time high now, across the world.

Hence, the contact centres will have to see what is the right technology that fits for their business and understand the customer’s consumer. Now, the challenge is that contact centres, which are wedded between ERM, ERP, CRM and other host applications and technology, will have to decide to either integrate or not to integrate, depending upon their verticals.

Indian contact centres will now have to move up the value chain from technology adoption to technology up gradation, which would give them the edge over their competitors.

© CyberMedia News