January 5, 2016
As if high employee turnover and dissatisfied customers weren’t enough, a new study finds that call centers are facing new challenges as the New Year gets underway.
That’s the word from Consero Group, an international leader in organizing industry-specific events for senior executives. The company just published the results As part of its look at the call center industry, the numbers speak for themselves.
“Nearly one in four of those surveyed by Consero—or 24 percent—said their top goal is to improve the customer experience,” the company said. Unfortunately, however, only one in three respondents believes they have the resources to do so. That could pose a problem going forward.
“The greatest impediment was technology and infrastructure,” with 48 percent saying so, Consero noted. “In fact, 78 percent of respondents stated that technology infrastructure in general fails to meet their needs. The second-biggest concern is financial—getting the job done despite budget constraints—at 22 percent, and senior management buy-in was a close third at 19 percent.”
But there are other issues as well, as call centers try to do more with less.
“About 43 percent of executive respondents said that the number of contact centers under their management has increased (with 45 percent reporting no change), while only 25 percent said outsourcing is a strategic priority,” Consero reported. As such, call centers do not seem to be receiving much support, either from outside or within their organizations.
“Only 39 percent of executives are satisfied with the training provided to their call center agents,” the survey found. “And only 35 percent rate their call center agents as engaged in the customer experience.”
And even with the advent of omnichannel communications, call centers are still failing to deliver what customers want.
“Call center executives cited phone and email as the top two ways to receive customer feedback (with 37 percent saying the former is the primary channel and 22 percent saying the latter),” Consero said. “But the problem is that those channels are too limited to meet the needs of today’s customers.”
As might be expected, it all comes down to technology. “Up to 40 percent of respondents said IT does not meet current needs, 80 percent said it will not meet future needs, and 40 percent claimed they lack analytics capabilities,” Consero said.
Clearly, this is the challenge. The question is, will there be enough funding to fix it?