Karina Majid, GM, Customer Interactive Solutions, Datacraft Asia speaks about the importance of IP based technology for contact centres and the key trends and challenges of the industry.

How important is IP based converged communication for the contact centres?

IP based contact centres are capable of delivering the requirements of current and future contact centres. With contact volumes increasing between 50-100% on an average each year, the most pressing need in the contact centre environment right now is to drive down costs. Looking forward, while cost will remain an issue, delivery of value to both the organisation and its customers will once again move to centre stage.

IP based architectures are able to lower the cost of infrastructure, integration, contact centre expansion, support and operations. Typically, an IP based contact centre is a simplified environment, capable of handling integrated multi-channel support and intelligent interaction routing to either assist or self-service channels. Flexibility of architecture is the top reason given by contact centres behind the adoption of IP based technology.

What are some of the key trends seen in the customer contact centre industry?

With the changing demands of the customers, contact centres today, have to provide customer management and not just customer service. Extending contact centre functionality into other parts of the organisation is very essential. They are now exploring and adopting different commercial and procurement models and driving productivity through human utilisation. Process optimisation is a renewed focus. Convergence marches toward IP based architecture and a measured, practical and holistic approach is taking place towards multi channels.

What are the challenges faced by present day contact centres?

Present day contact centres are facing a number of challenges in their day to day operations. There is a strong customer focus across sectors and regions. Quality of service is a key issue faced by most enterprises today. The contact centres are in constant pressure to improve the experience of their clients.

A measured, practical, holistic approach to multi-channel is the need of the hour. The seamless integration of multi channels along with customer satisfaction and retention, seamless response to queries are some of the challenges the contact centres are trying to cope up with. Therefore, there is a need for contact centre management to overcome these challenges.

How can contact centre management overcome these challenges?

Contact centre management enables organisations to retain customers through efficient customer service and increased satisfaction and increased revenue per customer. As multi channel development continues, it will enable assessing mobility options through location and ownership.

Contact centre management also helps them to adopt a more mature and balanced approach to customer satisfaction measurement. It also enables lead management, finding newer channels and opportunities for database management.