Are Call Centers…. Dying?!

Will call centers be around in the next 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years?

As far as the year 2000, rumor mills have been churning out claims that the call center industry is fading.  The future belongs to live chat, self-service, and other communication channels – all of which will eventually lead to the demise of the BPO industry.

Fast forward to 2021, and it looks like the speculation isn’t true.

Customer service requests have gone through the roof since the beginning of the pandemic as people struggled to defer bill payments, cancel travel plans, and explore online purchase options.  Overall, practically all business types locally and abroad have caused surges in ticket volumes – all managed by global support teams such as those based in the Philippines.

To say that call centers have reached “breaking point” is not overstating the state of affairs.  Hold times (the total length of time an agent places a customer on hold) and call escalations (when a caller requests to speak to a supervisor) have given rise to new challenges.

So where does this obsolescence talk all come from?

The buzz comes from the possibility that contact centers will stop answering and making calls altogether.  This is because as digital technology improves, customers care less about HOW their issues are solved but care more about simply getting it SOLVED QUICKLY.   To get issues solved in a flash, you need to be efficient.  And for the moment, it looks like AI (artificial intelligence), and automated responses are trends.

AI and auto-responses are truly heaven-sent for solving a number of customer issues – claiming refunds, tracking products, answering basic information… As technology progresses, it is better equipped to resolve problems – and can be so improved, it becomes more efficient than humans.

Where does this development put call centers and BPOs then?  And should BPO employees be on the hunt for an alternative career? (considering that the IT business process management industry employs AT LEAST 1.5 million in the years 2019-2020?)

A stable call center is an evolving call center.  Call centers will definitely exist as the need for a real, live, breathing person on the other end of the line couldn’t be dispensed with.  What changes now is HOW their agents interact with and serve their customers.

For instance, AI-powered systems could analyze customer interactions prior to redirecting that same call to the correct associate.  The objective is to cut that tedious “explaining” portion of the call.  Here, AI digs up the customer’s history and then forwards the call to an agent equipped to solve the issue quickly.

Yes, contact center agents will still connect with clients through voice channels – but not in the form of traditional calls.  Contact centers will also evolve into cloud-based systems.  NEARSOL, for instance, now has agents working remotely, and answering calls and queries from the comforts of their own home.  This allows extreme flexibility and offers both agent and client a better experience.

If you’re worried about how AI is poised to replace call centers in the near future, don’t be.  Robots can’t solve every problem.  The resilient contact center of the future can neither rely solely on machines or humans alone.  Rather, the key is a good combination of the two.  Automation technology will find itself augmenting human agents to radically improve customer experience.

The demand for call centers and BPOs has been made even more prominent by Covid-19.  Amid an economic slump, the last thing consumers have the patience for is an anonymous chatbot.  Bots and auto-responses cannot process empathy (and who doesn’t need a little bit of compassion in these times?).

The call center is certainly alive and well.  It won’t disappear, but it will change.  The battle now belongs to those who can: successfully wield the power of technology, provide the best training for its agents, maintain a conducive work culture, and provide a great place to work for all its employees.

Call centers are here to stay.

We’ll be around for the long haul.  Join the NEARSOL family.  Work with us remotely or from our sites in Iloilo and Manila!

NEARSOL is a US-based BPO and service company that offers clients custom-design solutions. It began operations in 2006 and has since gained a strong presence in the Latin American regions, the Caribbean, and the Asia Pacific, winning numerous awards for quality and service along the way. Most recent of which is its Great Place to Work-Certified™ Recognition.

The Great Place to Work-Certified™ Recognition is a global accreditation that tells stakeholders what employees think of the company culture.  In brief, it says a lot about the happiness and productivity index in NEARSOL.  Certification means people are happy working here and that leadership trust is palpable and real.

Come and discover why our employees and clients think we’re a great place to work!

We want you!  Visit nearsol.us and fill out your details through NIA, (NEARSOL Intelligence Automation), our personalized platform for the application process.