The landscape of communication is rapidly evolving so we strive to keep tabs on latest contact center trends so that we can provide our clients (and their customers) with the best service. Being in a mindset of growth and advancement always proves to be effective in helping our clients achieve their customer service goals as well as improving our own business.

Whether the current call center trends include tactics that we already employ or methods that we see on our horizon, here’s what our team is most excited about in 2019:

Contact Center Trend: Remote Contact Center Agents

“I’m excited about the contact center trend of moving towards more, state side, remote agents.  This excites me because it gives us the opportunity to grow our capacity, while still maintaining one corporate location, one culture, and essentially, one voice for our clients.  In addition, this really helps us provide gainful employment to people all over the country – helping in some of the highest unemployment areas in the United States.” – Dave Walter, VP of Operations

Contact Center Trend: Multi-Channel Approach

“The way people WANT to communicate is changing!  With outbound calling being our predominant channel for decades, more and more people need a digital alternative in order for us to communicate with them. I am most excited about it because I AM THAT PERSON!

I don’t have time to talk on the phone.  I want digital communication, digital reminders, and advertising where I am visiting online to connect with me. So, moving to a multi-channel services offering means we will reach people in a way they want to communicate with us, like me!” – Billie Johnson, VP of Client Results

“Long gone are the days of customers wanting, or even being required, to dial a phone number and speak to a person for support. I’m excited about continued multi-channel growth because it allows us to assist people in the contact method that they prefer and are comfortable with. As we continue to grow in our multi-channel capabilities, I look forward to seeing how that helps our clients provide the best customer support.” – Darren Hudach, Chief Growth Officer

Contact Center Trend: Chat and Messaging Applications

“I have two contact center trends that fit under this messaging umbrella.

The first trend I’m excited about is adding Live Chat to inbound conversation strategy. Since the oldest members of Generation Z are entering the workforce and making more online purchases, so offering more contact methods that appeal to them is highly important. Most young adults prefer to handle interactions via messaging and sending your business a chat to help them in the middle of a purchase tends to be more appealing than a phone call. I’m interested to watch and test how this improves conversion rates.

The second trend I want to highlight is Facebook chatbots. Businesses receive countless duplicate questions in just a day so an automated messaging for FAQs will help customers get an answer quickly and allow agents to focus their time on those that need further assistance. It’s also interesting that people value receiving a helpful answer than it being overly personal, so they are less likely to be turned off by a bot responding to their question if it leads them to a resolution.” – Amanda Blakeman Digital Growth Strategist

Contact Center Trend: Artificial Intelligence

“Artificial intelligence, adaptive learning, bots, predictive modeling – the evolving state of contact center technology has me really excited for 2019!  IBM recently reported that “in a 6 minute customer service call, 75% of that time is devoted to agents doing manual research.”  With some additional investment in new technology, like artificial intelligence, contact centers can create preemptive self-service tools that either allow customers to find answers to their complex questions without reaching out to customer service, freeing up agents from routine tier 1 support requests, or if the customer still does need to call in, allows the agent to answer their question in significantly less time. This is an improvement to the customer experience as well as a reduction in support time – a true win-win! I’m excited to see how this trend plays out in the upcoming year.” – Sarah Nelson, Marketing Manager

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