The Brouhaha of technology in the last decade is challenging the BPO companies’ and contact centers’ owners at every step. If you own a call center/BPO you must be aware of the context here.
Previously, all you had to do was to install a reliable phone setup with a strong backup technology that ensures a frictionless transmission of services. Post-this, you had to hire a competent team of agents and provide training. Today, it is just not enough.
You know that call centers are getting transformed into contact centers and BPO is called BPS now. This is so because outsourcing is expected to provide more than what was desired before. Apart from saving expense, raising holistic performance, and mitigating risks, call centre service providers are also keen to offer value in their solutions.
Outsourcing has taken a long leap from being a cost-effective strategy to a value-driven tactic for businesses. However, with new technologies emerging in the business spectrum every now and then, it is becoming extremely for the call centre service providers to match the erratic customer demands.
What are these challenges and have you faced any in recent times? Take a look at these hindrances and let us know:
The wavering customer preference
Running a BPO business means targeting the requirement of your clients (businesses) and offering first-string service experience to the customers.
But is it so easy to understand what customers are looking for in this dynamic environment? 5 years back, customers didn’t expect brands to be present on social media, today it is mandatory.
Similar to this, today’s customer expects customer support agents to be on their toes. If a customer is exploring an application, website, blog, or anything on the web and they look for help, businesses have to be there otherwise prospects will head to other brands.
Instantaneous solutions are preferred by the customers and BPO firms who don’t have the latest technology or tools face hard times meeting the expectations hence.
Customers hold the power to choose from which business they want to avail services. BPOs and contact centers are also making use of technologies to have intelligent routing of calls saving time and increasing the efficiency simultaneously.
The competition is tough and BPO owners have to be proactive at all times to understand what customer demands. There is no ‘Why’ in the customer requirement matrix, only ‘What’, ‘Where’, and ‘How’.
Dipping quality standards
This is happening a lot!
Businesses, especially in the western continents, are coming up with complaints of unethical or sub-par service experience from call centers.
And this is not a rumor, it’s true. Such issue comes up because call center agents are generally burdened with multiple projects. Also, most of the call centre service providers are located in nations like India, China, Philippines, Malaysia, etc.
The cultural gap between the eastern and western nations generally plays a crucial role in the mismatch between the expected and the delivered service standard.
Quite a lot BPO and call center owners are hence opting for reverse outsourcing as a much viable alternative. These specialized service providers located in India are hence opening up call centers in the USA, UK, etc and hiring agents there only. This eliminates the cultural gap aspect and hence raises the quality of delivered services.
What’s more, is that the salary of these experts will be paid in INR while the revenue will be earned in dollar itself. So, contact center owners are deploying such tactics to overcome this friction.
Eccentric technology
New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, RPA, and Cloud are reshaping the outsourcing sector with prominent changes.
For instance, if you haven’t versed your call center with the prodigious RPA technology then there is a high chance that you are going to lose a substantial part of revenue earning chance. Automation is one of the key aspects to generate value out of the delivered call center solutions.
Also, AI has been playing a paramount role in enhancing the impact of superior customer experience. BPOs are now utilizing chatbots to provide seamless and unparalleled service standards to the customers. What was a choice 5 years back has become an essentiality today.
Cloud has empowered the remote agent operation. This means that BPO service providers can now expand their operations in territories beyond their geographical reach with assured quality.
So, as a call centre service provider, these industry challenges are going to keep you engaged and on the edge.
What’re your thoughts? Do you think I have missed some major points? Share your perspective in the comments. Thanks!
