Social networking has had a profound impact on many industries as companies have looked to connect with their audience more effectively. A new report by Heavy Reading IP Services Insider suggested that the platform, along with the proliferation of tablets and smartphones, is also changing how VoIP call centers develop their solutions.
Businesses are turning to the latest VoIP call centers to interact with customers or clients through social networking, chat, voice and instant messaging. The report said companies are also adopting this technology to streamline their operations and implement a consolidated platform.
Denise Culver, Heavy Reading's research analyst, said VoIP call centers are branching away from traditional interactive voice response capabilities into communications to help customers receive service through many networks and devices.
"Until recently, enterprises and service providers generally created separate applications for voice and other customer service applications, but consumers increasingly are adopting a 'bring your own device' [BYOD] mentality, in which they expect to interact with anyone they choose," Culver explained. "Over the past several years, VoIP call center growth largely has been attributed to the benefits it enables."
Culver added that businesses are adopting VoIP call centers to support the rapid increase of remote- and teleworkers, mobile devices and BYOD among their organizations.
Data centers hold valuable info
While many companies are using their call centers as a communications platform to converse with their clients or customers, some businesses do not realize there is an abundance of data to be found in this channel. A recent CIO report said organizations in the past were primarily concerned with how many calls their centers received, the average hold time and case resolution rate.
Tony Filippone, HfS Research executive vice president, said many businesses are adopting analytics tools to study their call center information more effectively. The expert said social media and other online platforms are significantly impacting the demand of modern call centers, CIO reported.
Deepek Advani, vice president of predictive analytics for an IT solutions vendor, said some organizations are using text and sentiment analysis to examine their call center data.
"Many companies are integrating this call center data with their transactional data warehouse to reduce customer churn, and drive up-sell and cross-sell [activity]," Advani said, CIO reported. "Call center logs can provide invaluable insight on what customers were calling about, and can also provide insights for future product requirements."