Digital demand on contact centres: organisations fear their existing technology systems won’t meet their future
New Delhi, India, February 24, 2015: Rising pressure to deliver seamless customer service across digital channels is forcing vendors and consumers to explore new buying options and design innovative technology frameworks in contact centres. In fact, nearly ¹80% of 901 organisations across 72 countries surveyed for Dimension Data’s annual Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report (GCCBR) believe their current IT systems won’t meet future needs, while up to 40% of those organisations said that IT doesn’t meet their current needs.
Now in its 18th year, the GCCBR is the only report of its kind that researches both the strategic, and the operational performance trends of the global contact centre industry.
Adam Foster, Dimension Data’s Group Executive – Communications says, ”Non-voice traffic (digital) is set to rise in 87% of contact centres within the next two years, and voice traffic (talking to a customer centre agent on the telephone) will drop in 42% of contact centres during the same period. “Indeed, based on the information we’ve gathered over the last 10 years, digital will overtake voice in the contact centre in the next two years.”
Foster says this trend needs to be addressed urgently, and the good news is there are lots of options when it comes to procurement and consumption options. “Escalating IT dependency is already driving cloud and hybrid ownership, and technology – not dependencies – will force improved integration across hybrid architecture models of hosted and owned IT. In the last 12 months, contact centres choosing pure ownership models have reduced by 23%. Of contact centres that aren’t using hosted/cloud solutions yet 34% are considering a hosted technology model in the near future.”
According to Nagi Kasinadhuni, Dimension Data Asia Pacific’s General Manager – Communications, systems in the contact centre have fallen short of expectations year-on-year over the last four to five years, and organisations will need to refresh, change, and adapt to the emerging digital revolution which will see seven new digital channels come on board by the end of 2015. “The combination of technology that’s creating an omnichannel environment, coupled with the ability to analyse and act in real-time, and personalise customer service, provides powerful resources for organisations to create a productive, digital customer engagement model,” explains Kasinadhuni.
Investments in new technology solutions such as cloud and hybrid are delivering results in the short term. This is encouraging news for organisations considering new technology investments. They’re much quicker to deploy, so the return on investment for new technologies will be achieved quicker.
“In addition, our case study evidence validates the significant benefits enabled by cloud solutions. What’s more, over 89% of the current users polled by Dimension Data agreed that cloud has reduced costs, while 88% said that cloud offers access to new functionalities, says Kasinadhuni.”
