Customer management centres on rise as people prefer emails, texts and webchat to phonecalls
A study released by Dimension Data has found that contact centres are likely to be replaced by customer management centres as they move away from only offering phone and email options.
The contact centre benchmarking report found that of the 546 contact centres surveyed across the world, 40% are managing SMS interactions and a quarter offer web chat.
It was also found that 19% of call centres use social media interactions, with 32% planning to add this in the next two years. However, the rate for this was lowest in the UK at 9%, as compared to 31% in Asia and the Americas.
The research shows the top priorities of call centres are to improve service and promote self-service channels for customers.
Andrew McNair, Dimension Data’s head of global benchmarking, said: “Smart devices are dramatically changing the communication landscape and enabling increased numbers of customers to help themselves and decide how, when and where they engage.
“Organisations will need to embrace smart applications in order to make popular transactions even easier for their customers.
“That’s because self-service is fast becoming the accepted standard to provide customers with more choices to engage with the organisation.”