Pieter de Villiers

Contact centres businesses should move away from people-centred operations to automated cost efficient systems, says Pieter de Villiers

In an age of self-sufficient, networked customers, businesses risk being left behind if their call centres don’t incorporate relevant technology.

This is according to Pieter de Villiers of De Villiers, Bester and Associates, speaking at the “Leveraging the Contact Centre” executive forum recently held at the Southern Sun Grayston in Sandton.
He pointed out that few companies have picked up on the idea of incorporating technology in their call centres to automate call handling and improve service.

Contact centre businesses should move away from people-centred operations to automated, cost-efficient systems, noted De Villiers.

Customer service is a critical competitive factor; the need to improve responsiveness and deliver high quality service is now more important than ever before, because of threats from social media, which might make contact centres obsolete in the future, he said.

“Contact centres should not forget that in most cases they are dealing with customers who are very frustrated and need their problems to be solved promptly.”

Contact centre operators should also know that nowadays customers are obsessed with self-service. “Modern customers are obsessed with the ‘self’ concept where they can do everything on their own,” he pointed out.

These customers want to do things with minimal human intervention at their own time, he said. “Proof of this is a number of social forums and social media aimed at solving customer problems.

“Call centres have to meet and exceed the ever-changing and usually more demanding customer expectations. They should adopt the technologies which can help businesses to achieve the seamless operation they are striving for,” he advised.

The technology call centres have to adopt is not complicated. “The problem is the mindset of people. They are too sceptical of integrating technology into their contact centres.”

Virtual voice

To address the needs of these customers, call centres have to integrate technologies like interactive voice response (IVR) into their business to be able to deliver good service, especially where high volumes and frequency of customer contact are required, said De Villiers.

With IVR, a call centre can automate some or all of its customer interactions, De Villiers explained. “IVR software gathers customer information and matches it with data from back-office systems to fulfil customer enquiries or requests without the need to transfer to a live agent.” This offers self-service that many customers are after, he added.

De Villiers said IVR allows clients to interact with a company’s computer through pre-recorded prompts and responses heard by the caller by pressing on the keypads of a touchtone phone.
“It offers relief from having to wait a long time to have a call attended to as all calls are immediately answered once they get through.” It also allowed 24-hour operations while saving on employee expenses.

IVR can help with the high volume of calls that the contact centre agents are handling on a daily basis, he said.

Service solution

According to De Villiers, productivity and performance are determined by the call centre’s success at hiring and managing human resources to handle the calls, managing and controlling random call arriving patterns, and providing the required service. And since all calls are answered instantaneously, this saves time and costs for the client, he added.

Businesses have to recognise that agents in contact centres manage the technology and high-value interactions with customers and this is making it difficult for them to achieve good customer service.
Call centres are losing their credibility because of poor quality service. Technology is the answer to this, he pointed out.

Like any other business, call centres should strive for ways to make profits and save costs. Self-service via technology is the way to go, said De Villiers.

The forum was organised by Intuate Group in partnership with ITWeb.