Top 10 Customer Contact Center Trends for 2014
El Paso, TX (PRWEB) December 04, 2013 -- DATAMARK, Inc., a leading provider of global business services to Fortune 500 companies and government organizations, has released a new white paper naming its Top 10 Customer Contact Center Trends for 2014.
As service moves beyond phone calls to other communication channels--including email, web chat and social media--businesses and government agencies will find ways to help customers easily find answers to their questions. This includes improved self-help content such as FAQ pages with videos and downloadable materials, and live video support with experts. Also, the growing U.S. Hispanic consumer market will shape trends in outsourced customer contact, such as the growth of onshore and nearshore call centers in regions with a bilingual workforce proficient in English and Spanish.
Below are five of DATAMARK's top customer contact center trends, in no particular order:
1. Improved self-help resources across all channels. To reduce the number of phone calls and requests through other channels, companies will assess their customer-service presence on their web sites and social media to make self-help pages easier to find and use. For example, a customer visiting a company’s Facebook page will quickly spot a link to FAQs or Customer Service and follow that path instead of posting a complaint on the company’s news feed for all the world to see. On self-serve pages, customers will also find instructional videos, as well as downloadable customer service apps for smartphones and tablets.
2. Video chat with an expert. When self-help is no longer an option, we’ll see more live video support, using services such as Google Helpouts. The best companies will encourage their engineers and executives to take some time away from labs and boardrooms to video chat with customers and learn what issues are giving them trouble.
Some companies will turn these video chats into events that will generate positive publicity by surprising customers with celebrity experts. Imagine getting help with your Dyson vacuum from inventor James Dyson himself; or being greeted on video chat by guest customer service rep Sir Richard Branson, who cheerfully resolves your Virgin Mobile billing issue and then shows you a couple of cool tips for your new iPhone 5s.
3. Mobile apps for customer service. As mentioned above, companies will work to keep complaints and drama off of social media news feeds by steering consumers toward mobile customer-service apps. Instead of posting a message on Facebook or Twitter and waiting for a response, a customer can open their app and get the help they need. FAQs, downloads of instructional manuals, how-to videos and “schedule-a-callback” are useful app features that can save a customer from having to wait on the phone to speak to a real person.
4. Look onshore or nearshore for outsourced customer contact. As the delivery of customer service become more sophisticated, companies that outsource their customer contact will shift their focus from cost savings to higher quality of care. This means they will be willing to pay a little more to have their outsourced customer contact centers onshore--within the U.S.--or at nearshore locations, such as cities in Mexico close to the U.S. border, where there is a young, educated, bilingual workforce fluent in English and Spanish.
5. The growing Hispanic market will drive more outsourced customer contact. U.S. Hispanic purchasing power was $1.2 trillion in 2012 and is expected to grow to $1.5 trillion by 2015, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth. Hispanics are one of the most active demographics on social media, and Facebook recently announced it is opening an office in Miami, Fla. to reach out to companies and advertisers that focus on the Hispanic market. Companies in need of Spanish-speaking customer service reps will turn to contact center service providers in the U.S. Southwest, northern Mexico, and to other Latin American countries that have large bilingual workforces.
To see all 10 contact center trends, follow this link to download the complimentary white paper, “Customer Contact Center Trends for 2014.”
About DATAMARK
DATAMARK, Inc. is a leading business process outsourcing company specializing in high-volume digital mailroom management, document processing, document management, bilingual customer contact centers and business process consulting for Fortune 500 firms and other large organizations.
Headquartered in El Paso, Texas, DATAMARK employs nearly 2,200 people in its U.S., Mexico and India facilities. For more information, visit http://www.datamark.net. Follow industry news and trends at DATAMARK's Outsourcing Insights blog at http://www.datamark.net/blog.
David Peregrino, DATAMARK, Inc., http://www.datamark.net, +1 (915) 242-6299, [email protected]
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