More than 90% of communication in southern African contact centres is still conducted via voice calls – which is both the most inefficient and the most expensive way of communicating with clients.
“It is worrying to see how few contact centres are making use of even basic technologies like e-mail, fax and Web chat to connect with their customers, favouring voice above all,” says Graham McLeod, manager of the CRM focus team at Nashua Communications who address the sixth Contact Centre Managers Forum.
McLeod says that, even though there has been an uptake in new technologies like social media, southern Africa is still not near to the US in this regard, with a number of obstacles preventing growth. These include the availability, cost and quality of bandwidth.
“The quality of the interaction between the contact centre and the customer has to be superb at all times and ultimately, South Africa’s internet connectivity is just not reliable enough to facilitate all touch points at this time.”
In addition, he says that old company processes still affect the policies in place today.
“This is a case of do or die,” says McLeod. “Companies either have to adapt to market trends and demands, or sit on the side-line and watch clients leave to buy services from companies who deal with them in a way they prefer. This is a massive mind shift away from the antiquated corporate mentality of ‘take it or leave it’ – the consumer drives the market and ultimately votes with their wallets.”
In addition, younger generations favour channels such as social networks and instant messaging (IM) over actual voice calls rendering voice telephony irrelevant for this market.
McLeod says that the contact centre is the true face of any business, and one that customers regularly interact with.
“If your customers aren’t satisfied with the method in which they are liaising with your business, then regardless of the product or service you’re offering, you’ve failed to secure them as a long term return customer.”
This has led to many organisations bringing the contact centre to the boardroom.
“We’re increasingly seeing the contact centre represented at management level with the capacity to drive and set strategy,” he says.
“With the progression of the contact centre to this level, the integration of new technologies is more likely in the foreseeable future and contact centres will soon be responding to the method in which the customer chooses to interact with the business.”