Call centers are one of those industries, which get affected by both, internal and external factors. From major reshuffling of staff to never seen before technology trends, completely changed consumer behavior, newly enforced telecommunication law, etc. have the power of changing various facets of this industry upside down. Thus, keeping eye on varying trends becomes necessary.
Instead of giving you combined trends in general for the call center industry; we have come up with an exclusive blog sharing trends related to outbound call centers. To help call centers and even businesses using a call center software solution to run an outbound call center, we have jotted down the most influential call center trends 2021 related to the outbound call centers. Even if you are running blended campaigns, knowing these contact center trends will help you define a winning strategy for outgoing campaigns.
So let’s explore the major trends to look forward to 2021, which will drive the outbound call center industry:
- Intelligent call center software will become inevitable
- Unlike earlier when only a few companies used to use a call center solution and similar tools to run outbound calling campaigns for collection, lead generation, sales, business development, etc., now 7 out of 10 companies use this software.
- To stay ahead of the competition, adopting the most advanced form of call center solution will become necessary in 2021. Intelligent call center software is developed by adopting cutting edge technologies and predictive analytics, which is a foremost form of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
- From increased productivity to increased success rate can be achieved using this form of call center solution. So, using it will become one of the dominating trends in 2021.
- Omnichannel customer reach will define the success
- With the availability of ease of access to technology, many communication tools, and channels have got introduced in the market.
- The increased communication channels and their massive use have also enforced all businesses using one or more communication tools to use omnichannel communication tools. The outbound call center industry cannot stay behind here.
- To reach customers and prospective clients via their preferred mode of communication, it will become necessary for outbound call centers to use an omnichannel intelligent call center solution. If not all, adding all majorly used and in-demand communication channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, etc. will become unavoidable according to the trend prediction experts of this industry.
- Personalization will increase the success rate
- Using the same mechanical speech shown to the agent in the call script feature of the intelligent call center software would hardly impress someone to make a buying decision or make a payment for the debt.
- With the financial crunch, which is experienced by many in the past year dominated by the world novel COVID 19 pandemic, the buying decision will be more careful and conscious. People are more selective about the services they invest in or the product they buy.
- The year 2021 will be challenging for outbound call centers if the strategic approach is not adopted. As per the industry experts, the best way to entice someone is to build a rapport with the person or touch the pain points. For this, personalizing conversations will become necessary for call centers.
- Leading call center technology companies like ours, Inextrix Technologies Pvt. Ltd started offering various integrations and tools to, for example, call center CRM integration. This integrated intelligent call center software will help call centers build an instant emotional connect with the consumers and increases the success rate.
- Reaching consumers can become more complicated
- In the past few years, all aspects of law and legislation have ensured that consumer preferences and privacy are more controlled by the consumers themselves. If talking about the telecommunication industry, which directly impacts call centers and their actions, some procedural changes are enforced such as STIR/ SHAKEN.
- Some applications let consumers see the name of the calling party, which makes call filtering easier and it is permitted by law, too.
- The call flagging and blocking have become a common habit of people.
- All of this can make it difficult to reach the consumer. However, it will not be impossible. Managers of the call centers will need to invest more time in defining call center strategy by embracing the technological advantages of the intelligent call center software without compromising with the legislation set by TCPA.
- Stay ready to embrace data analytics and other AI tools
- Artificial intelligence, big data, data analytics, etc. have started influencing almost all industry verticals. Therefore, being ready and adopting these trending technologies can help you grip the market.
- You might not need to get chatbots or voice assistants. However, using predictive dialing available in intelligent call center software and making decisions based on data analysis can help you set the mark, which is difficult to reach otherwise.
- Virtual cloud call center software will dominate the industry
- Many call centers, similar to many other businesses belonging to diversified industry verticals, had enforced to run operations remotely. A majority of call centers had chosen to use VPN (Virtual Private Network) to access their call center solution and run their outbound calling campaigns. However, everyone knows VPN based software and IT infrastructure access cannot be the ultimate, long term, and reliable solution. All of this caused many challenges and issues if reliable technical support was not available from the technology provider or partner.
- On the other hand, call centers and businesses experienced the benefits of running remote call centers such as reduced costs, increased scalability, and many more. This created a need for a reliable call center solution and workforce that can operate remotely with the same efficiency and accuracy.
- The technology companies have been in the forefoot to meet any technology needs. Therefore, companies like ours launched a cloud call center solution, which is also an intelligent call center solution.
- With this reliable and empowering software and business model, many call centers have already moved remote and many are in the process to move to the cloud.