Many customers simply don't like to place a customer service call, preferring text-based services. It's no surprise, then, that live web chat services are expected to grow by 87% over the next 12 to 18 months. Live chat has long been a nice option to add to your website, giving your customers another way to contact customer service agents. However, it is becoming a must-have, especially for potential customers interacting with your brand for the first time. More than 41% of all customers prefer live web chat, while 50% of mobile users look for the feature when visiting a website. Offering this channel is a way to stay competitive and boost customer satisfaction, especially when fielding initial questions from a potential buyer. Many call centers have integrated live chat into their services and can set up the channel, embed it on your website, and provide an agent to manage incoming customer requests.
Artificial intelligence continues to be a key driver of growth in the call center service industry, especially when it comes to interactive voice response. IVR is the automated phone tree that callers often encounter when contacting a customer service department. IVR with AI and machine learning enables better recognition of caller accents and intonation, and supports more efficient call direction to the appropriate agent and department.
AI isn't just becoming a mainstay for IVR; it is essential to mine data for insights into customer needs and satisfaction. Call center services are increasingly offering access to data-driven reports that support better decision-making around marketing, customer service delivery and even inventory management. Quality assurance in the modern business world relies on data, and machine learning is essential to make the troves of data that businesses capture every day useful.
June 2020: A market report released by Technavio anticipates the global call center outsourcing market will grow by $13.54 billion through 2023, representing a compound annual growth rate of 3% for the industry. The report also acknowledges that the market is significantly fragmented and includes a wide range of service providers. North America leads the way, capturing 38% of the industry growth. One the major drivers of growth, according to the report, is robotic process automation (RPA), which involves the use of chatbots and interactive voice response trees to automate certain call center functions, such as customer identification and call routing.