6 Must-Read Call Center Research Reports on the Future

Today’s customer-driven marketplace is increasingly demanding that call center agents provide an exceptional customer experience across all channels, as opposed to phone communications alone. In order to remain competitive in the shifting digital landscape, contact centers are adopting multi-channel solutions (social media, email, live chat, surveys) to interact with customers.

To shed light on the evolving contact center, we’ve compiled a list of 6 must-read research reports that cover everything from cloud-based call center infrastructure to speech analytics, multichannel metrics, and more. Take a look through the following report summaries to better understand the rapidly changing contact center model, as well as some of the industry trends and challenges contributing to this evolution.

• Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Market Report
• Speech Analytics: Making Effective Use of Voice in a Multi-Channel World
• 2013 Multichannel Metrics Survey Results
• Decision Matrix: Selecting a Multichannel Cloud Contact Center Vendor
• Creating an Intelligent Contact Center of the Future by Starting Today
• Ahead in the Cloud: Why Contact Centers Are Moving to Cloud-Based Solutions

Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Market Report

DMG Consulting LLC’s report, reprinted for NewVoiceMedia, covers cloud-based contact infrastructure and applications, which have captured the attention of business and IT leaders around the world. Faced with the challenge of optimizing the effectiveness of their contact center systems and applications, companies are finding creative and cost-effective approaches with cloud-based partners.

DMG Consulting claims the standard cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions should come with the ability to handle multi-channel inbound, outbound (preview, progressive, and predictive), blended, email, chat/instant message (IM), SMS, and, increasingly, social media interactions.

Speech Analytics: Making Effective Use of Voice in a Multi-Channel World

Despite the number of newer channels available to customers today (social media, mobile, live chat, etc.), the role and importance of voice (phone and interactive voice response (IVR)) conversations is still critical.  Aberdeen’s report explores the role speech analytics plays in helping companies maximize their voice-based conversations.  It also highlights specific activities that help organizations reduce customer complaints by 12.6% year-over-year and achieve 9.3% annual growth in company revenue.

2013 Multichannel Metrics Survey Results

Interactive Intelligence and Contact Center Pipeline’s Multichannel Metrics Survey summarizes findings from a survey of contact center professionals across various industries, company types and sizes, and geographical locations.

The questions posed to respondents centered around multichannel communications in today’s contact center environment, including: What impact are emerging channels having on contact centers?  What are the key metrics that centers are using to manage both new and traditional channels?  Participants shared critical information about which emerging channels their contact centers are managing, as well as their metrics for phone, email, text-based, social, and video channels.

Decision Matrix: Selecting a Multichannel Cloud Contact Center Vendor

Ovum’s report explores the marketplace for hosted contact center services in the U.S., with particular emphasis on the ability of service providers to handle multichannel customer interactions. It compares vendors based on the following criteria: the strength and currency of their technology platform, views of their customers, and the impact each company has on in the marketplace.  Vendors selected for inclusion in the report have the capacity to route at least one interaction channel beyond voice and have at least 10,000 deployed agent positions in the U.S.

Creating an Intelligent Contact Center of the Future by Starting Today

The March 2014 installment in CRM magazine’s Best Practice series seeks to answer the question: What is an intelligent contact center?  Contributors approach the issue from several different angles, but the key takeaway is that an intelligent contact center must consolidate all customer interactions into a single view. This data stream coming from multiple channels has to be synthesized into a coherent conversation between the contact center and customers, regardless of the source: voice, chat, email, social media, mobile, etc.

Ahead in the Cloud: Why Contact Centers Are Moving to Cloud-Based Solutions

Magnetic North’s report explores the drivers of cloud adoption in the contact center, as well as some of the challenges to adoption, including legacy IT equipment, lack of properly trained staff, time, resources, etc.  According to Magnetic North, the cloud is firmly on the contact center agenda and companies that have not already moved to the cloud are most likely considering doing so in the near future.  Are those companies already in the cloud reaping the rewards?  Are they using the cloud to deliver new communications channels? 

Final Thoughts

The rapidly changing contact center environment is forcing companies to address industry trends such as cloud adoption, multichannel solutions, speech analytics, and more.