Contact Centers for the 21st Century

The major trend that contact centers have witnessed over the past few years is shifting of contact center operations to countries where labor is cheap. Since employee cost is a very high running overhead cost, a reduction in this cost is a powerful incentive to offshore contact centers. The flip side to offshoring is that very often customers complain about a drop in quality of service.

Organizations therefore need to strike a balance between customer satisfaction and cutting overheads. Contact centers of the new century are no longer a necessary evil; they are being treated as legitimate profit centers that contribute to the bottom line. This they do by helping retain customers and identifying the high-paying customers so that these can be serviced better. Contact centers are now at the forefront of a company’s image-building exercise. FAQs on company websites and self service portals not only ensure customer participation and quick issue resolution they also free the agents to focus on other issues.

Another trend is the proliferation of virtual contact centers that allow different contact centers located discretely to communicate with one another. This helps in sharing of information as well as resources. It has also led to a growth in the number of home-based agents.