Top Trends for the Contact Center in 2014

As the year winds down and we begin to anticipate turkey, candles and sleigh bells ringing, it’s also time to look ahead to the New Year and examine the trends that it might bring. For 2014, there are several technological and management trends likely to drive the contact center industry forward.

Everyone has different opinions, of course, but there are several overriding themes that most, if not all, contact centers will encounter next year. Omar Zaibak, marketing manager for VoiceTrust, recently identified some of the most visible trends for contact centers in 2014.

Social Media

 While the percentage of customers using social media is still small, it’s growing rapidly, and these customers tend to be the most influential and vocal. They share experiences, both good and bad, with a wide number of people. If you don’t already have the means to monitor, respond to and even market via social media in your contact center, 2014 will be the year you need to get busy.

Cloud Migration

 By many estimates, a majority of contact centers are using at least one cloud-based solution today. Expect to see this number continue to grow, with more companies turning to the cloud and more existing cloud users putting more functions into it. According to Zaibak, the gap in functionality between premise-based and cloud-based systems continues to narrow, further driving hosted call center growth. Expect to see more consolidation in this space and 18 percent of all call center seats being cloud-based by 2015.

Mobile Customer Service

 With more people than ever carrying smartphones, the mobile app will become a serious piece of the customer support puzzle. Smartphone integration, therefore, will be critical for companies hoping to retain their customers.

Voice of the Customer

 This is an idea that involves listening to your customers in everything they have to say – not only with their voices, but with their actions and preferences. Voice of the customer solutions will continue to penetrate the contact center space, and coupled with analytics solutions, will offer organizations unprecedented amounts of actionable intelligence.

Voice Biometrics

 As call center fraud continues to rise, companies will find they need better methods of authentication than passwords, PINs and challenge questions. Expect more companies to put in place foolproof methods to ensure that customers are who they say they are, and increasingly, this will involve “voice print” technology.

While few contact centers will meet all these criteria by the end of the year, its’s certain that most, if not all, of these items are on a majority of contact centers’ lists of goals for the year. Many companies have found, from experience, that taking action too slowly means risking they will be left behind by competitors. 

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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