The user segmentation is moving towards value-to-the-customer

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According to the recent Global Contact Center Benchmarking report, only 30.3% of contact centers in Asia integrate services with sales. What do you think are the reasons for this?
The reason is that traditionally, most of the contact centers in Asia or India (either captive or outsourced) have been built to provide a lower cost option to serve. However, as companies strive to retain clients, reduce churn and build long-term value with clients, it is becoming important to use the touch-points available to sell.

Do you think the Indian contact centers are at par with their global counterparts?
In my opinion, the Indian contact center industry is at par or even ahead, when it comes to adopting IP, and having processes in place for business continuity and mechanisms for improving agent productivity. These are still early days for multi-channel, speech, and integrated processes.

There has been a drop in the number of companies using segmentation. Is this trend a reflection that the enterprises do not want to generate maximum value from contact centers?
In fact, it is the contrary. The user segmentation is moving away from segmentation by products alone, but by the value to the customer within the segment. For example, in the past, the product category could be the user of a mobile service versus a broadband service. The current trend is to also segment by the value of client within this segment.

What strategies should the enterprises adopt to increase the first call resolution?
Process improvement, integration of processes with the business, and having an integrated architecture will enable agents to have information to improve first call resolution. Also, the adoption of UC and extending it to the enterprise will give better options to the agents to rope in subject matter experts to satisfy clients, thereby improving first call resolution.

How important is multimedia, SMS and video for call center operations?
While phones are still the predominant channel, other channels are slowly but surely becoming important. The Internet is becoming the first stop for many to look for solutions before they call a contact center. SMS and video are both important channels that serve different needs and both are important. Video is an interesting trend. In addition, we are seeing a lot of activity in the market in encouraging customers to use self-service as a preferred option.

Gagandeep Kaur
gagandeepk@cybermedia.co.in