Will Automation Spell The End For Contact Centres?
Contact centres are often described as modern-day factories, and their employees just as vulnerable to automation as factory workers were in the early days of manufacturing automation in the 1960s.
As automation becomes intelligent, and conversational AI replaces the need for (some) human interactions, what will the contact centre of the future look like? Will it even exist? And what will happen to the people in those contact centres?
Everywhere we look, media headlines tell us that automation will take our jobs. But what if it makes us more efficient, and creates different jobs? It could even change the way we structure our working week. Simply Business is an insurance company that is trialling a four-day week in its contact centres – with everyone still paid the same amount – in an effort to boost productivity and promote good mental health in the workplace. Could this be the new normal?
Automation is also, to some extent, driving the repatriation of contact centres from offshore locations. Offshoring was all about reducing costs, and for companies based in countries where employee costs were high, it was far more efficient to locate contact centres in areas where the cost of business was lower. But now many transactional, routine customer service interactions can be automated, they are again investing in home-grown talent to deal with the more complex and higher-value customer contacts.
So the contact centre is changing again. Gone are the perceptions of factory-like conditions, with humans processing millions of the same mundane enquiries: where is my order, how do I return a product, can I change my payment method. All that can be done by bots, which are far more efficient and less prone to error than humans.
And machines can support humans, too, working with them to provide context to customer queries that lead to better experiences for both the customer and the customer service agent. They can show the relevant records from previous conversations, make sure the information the agent has is accurate and relevant, and even predict the likely outcome of an interaction. They can help agents resolve issues quickly, and complete their records efficiently and easily.
How do you achieve this? There are three steps for businesses to take:
1. Review your existing infrastructure. What capabilities do you have now, and what do you want to achieve?
2. Assess how automation can help you achieve your customer contact objectives, and how it fits your overall business objectives. Do you want to increase efficiency, increase capacity for agents to deal with more valuable tasks, and increase value, for example?
3. Evaluate your current sourcing arrangements. Are they future proof, or are they starting to creak?
The contact centre of the future will be a place where skilled employees deal with complex issues, solve problems for customers, drive value for their employees and have greater job satisfaction. Places where humans and robots work together, not against each other. Automation could just herald a new golden age for customer service.
Source: contactcentres
Industry: unified communication news
Latest Jobs
-
- Information Security Manager- Global Sporting Brand. UK. £100,000
- London
- £100.000
-
REFCH8265 Identifier Project Information Security Manager- Global Sporting Brand. UK. £100,000 A unique and exclusive opportunity to DCL Search to provide leadership and guidance Information and IT Security practices to one of the most recognised sporting brands in the world. You will be the envy of your colleagues, friends and peers as you take the lead in developing and implementing a security strategy. You must have a blend of knowledge across information security and technical security and be able to build internal and external stakeholder relationships. To coin a well known phrase, you should be a player manager. You don’t need to be currently hands on configuring firewalls, monitoring SIEM alerts, but maybe you have in the past. Ideally you will have come from a technical background as you will be closing be working with technical teams. Skills should include, but not be limited to: Managing / developing to Incident response plans. Information Security Risk Management / compliance. Security awareness Driving remediation plans to address vulnerabilities etc. Hybrid working. Up to £100,000 + benefits.
-
- Lead Information and Cyber Security Specialist, Financial Services. Exclusive to DCL Search
- London
- 85,000
-
Consultative approach with experience engaging with internal stakeholders providing advice and guidance across information security policies and standards into projects and programmes. Risk identification / Assessment / Management across people and process. ISO27001. Open mindedness to take on projects and programmes that will involve advising, scoping, refining, improving technical security control relating to best practice. Preferred experience; PCI DSS ISA or consultative experience within security Payment card industry. Information Security / technical security controls within Financial Services. Risk Assessment / management across technical controls. Technical Security background. Experience within secure by design and the technical security controls relating to projects / programmes. iSO27001 Lead Implementer / Auditor. CISA, CISM, CISSP. 2 days a fortnight in London- or more if you want.. Hybrid reworking.
-
- Cyber Security Associate, Financial Services. Exclusive to DCL Search
- London
- £40,000
-
Exclusive Cyber Security Associate needed within a forward thinking financial services business head quartered in London. DCL Search have been engaged on an Identifier Project to attract the very best cyber talent to this business. Influence the cyber security capability and direction within the business. Learn new skills working within a collaborative team. Grow as a security professional. ROLE Triaging and troubleshooting security alerts at a level 1 / level 2 capacity. Reviewing security change management requests. Managing and use of security tooling such as; Endpoint management Vulnerability management Patch management CASB Experience with the following tools is desirable. ZOHO Desktop Central (Endpoint Management) Splunk (SIEM) Qualys CASB (Microsoft) Microsoft Azure Varonis DatAdvantage ADAudit Plus Sonicwall, Paloalto, Dark Trace, Cloudflare, Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft defender.
-
- Senior Cyber Security Engineer, Financial Services. Exclusive to DCL Search
- London
- 70000
-
Exclusive Senior Cyber Security Engineer needed within a forward thinking financial services business head quartered in London. DCL Search have been engaged on an Identifier Project to attract the very best cyber talent to this business. Influence the cyber security capability and direction within the business. Learn new skills working within a collaborative team. Grow as a security professional. ROLE Day to day operations, management and scalability of existing cyber security systems Managing of and maturing security tooling such as; SIEM Endpoint Management Firewall Patch Management CASB Vulnerability management. Triaging and troubleshooting security alerts. Improve tooling, reducing false positives. Reviewing, approving, escalating security change management requests. Implementing new cyber security systems. Ideal technical experience · Vulnerability Management: Qualys · Endpoint Management: ZOHO Desktop Central · Forcepoint: CASB, DLP, webs security, email security. · SIEM (Splunk) · Firewalls: Sonicwall, Palo Alto · Endpoint Microsoft Defender · Appreciation of ISO27001, GDPR, PCI, etc 2 days a fortnight in London- or more if you want.. Hybrid reworking.