Automation in call centers will increase

In the next few years, standard call center tasks will be automated more and more in order to offer customers more choice and at the same time reduce costs, as a study by the software company Verint shows. According to information from Gunnar Sohn, editor-in-chief of the online news service “Neue Nachrichten”, agents should concentrate on more complex inquiries and cultivate personal relationships with customers more intensively.

The most common method of quality assurance for 80 percent of the call centers surveyed is currently classic side-by-side monitoring. Silent monitoring and mystery calls are also used in slightly more than half of the facilities. “Recording the conversations could save a lot of time, because whether a conversation situation relevant to the coaching arises is a coincidence. If the conversations are recorded, the trainers have the opportunity to select these interactions from the overall pool, ”recommends Verint manager Gisa Heinemann. The process is even better supported with a speech analysis, since one can automatically search for specific words or phrases without having to listen to the recordings.

Traditional indicators such as service level, call duration and call volume are still used as performance indicators. When the respondents call a call center themselves, they want short waiting times, friendly agents and their requests to be dealt with quickly: “Surprisingly, however, less than half of the respondents use these factors – apart from the service level – to evaluate the performance of their own call center . Quantitative key figures still dominate, ”says Heinemann. This may be due to the fact that the measurement of parameters such as friendliness still seems complex to many. But even in this field, speech analysis software can be used and the process can be simplified enormously.

According to Jens Klemann, the partner of the Strateco consulting firm responsible for carrying out the study, language analysis is becoming increasingly important: “Especially in view of the planned regulatory measures in telemarketing, effective and reliable quality assurance for so-called outbound calls is becoming a compulsory exercise for all premium service providers . “

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