What is Call Centre Technology? The Upcoming Trends To Know

Call centre technology has drastically evolved over the past few years moving from simple phone systems, to omnichannel customer experience technology. New innovation technology in call centre software enables businesses to leverage the latest in Artifical Intelligence, increase automation, improve customer retention and provide the ‘ultimate’ customer experience.

In this article, we’ll break down everything you need to know about call centre technology including future trends and the top considerations to be aware of when comparing solutions.

What is Call Centre Technology?

Call centre technology is the software that enables customer support and sales teams to communicate with customers across multiple channels.

Benefits of Call Centre Technology

Call centre software brings many benefits that translate to achieving business outcomes. It enhances the customer experience, provides the right tools to drive sales performance and bolsters operational efficiency.

The different components of call centre technology

Here are the essential components of call centre software:

VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) facilitates call centre technology users to receive inbound calls and make outbound calls from anywhere, as long as they have a stable internet connection. VoIP technology allows businesses to modernise their technology stack, reduce costs and provide call centre agents with the flexibility to work from anywhere.

Multiple channels

Today’s call centre software combines numerous communication channels into a single interface, allowing agents to manage several customer interactions simultaneously. For example, an agent can engage with one customer on web chat while speaking with another over the phone. This multichannel functionality enhances operational efficiency and increases response times.

CRM integration

A crucial component of call centre technology is the ability to integrate with an organisation’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, achieved through a Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) adaptor. This adaptor is typically a widget located in the bottom corner of the CRM interface.

CTI adaptors bring rich call centre functionality to the CRM including:

Click to call – agents can initiate calls by simply clicking on the customer’s phone number in their record.

Record pop – when a customers calls in, their record automatically appears, providing the agent with instant access to details such as previous interactions and purchase history.

Automatic call logging – after an agent ends the phone call, interaction details and the call recording are automatically updated in the customer’s record.

Post-call summarisation – generative AI produces call summaries after each interaction, reducing administration work for agents.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system

An IVR system is an automated call routing tool that streamlines the caller experience and helps customer service teams deliver fast, cost-effective phone support.

IVR systems receive a caller’s response through either touch-tone input (“Press 1 to speak with Pathology”) or via verbal input (“I would like to return my package”). The IVR then routes the caller to the correct department or most appropriate agent.

Advanced call centre software enables customer service managers to configure skills based routing. This call routing strategy assigns specific types of enquiries to agents with the relevant skills to resolve them. For example, a customer who enquiries about billing will be routed to an agent that has specialised knowledge about the company’s billing processes.

Self Service

Providing self service options allows customers to resolve issues and find answers to questions without needing to interact with a call centre agent. Call centre software enables managers to create self service workflows within the IVR and integrate Virtual Agents to assist the customer along their self service journey.

Call queuing

Call Centre technology contains more superior features than a traditional phone system.

When call volumes exceed above agent availability, call queue features such as ‘Maintain Position in Queue’ become a vital feature to enhance the customer experience.

Call queuing can improve the customer experience through:

Predictive dialler

Utilising the predictive dialler mode drives outreach performance, removes manual effort and optimises connection rates.

A predictive dialler automates the process of making outbound calls by applying a sophisticated algorithm that predicts when agents will finish their current call and automatically dials the next phone number. This outbound dialler mode eliminates downtime between calls, allowing agents to efficiently engage with more sales leads throughout their shift.

Call analytics

Capturing call analytics is crucial for measuring key performance indicators (KPIs), evaluating agent performance and identifying improvement areas.

Call centre software displays both historical and real-time data so managers can track agent performance. Standard analytics call centre software captures include call volume, first call resolution (FCR) rate and customer feedback metrics such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.

Call recording

Call recording is a core component of call centre software that records phone calls either on-demand or automatically. Managers utilise call recordings for agent training, to conduct quality assurance processes or meet compliance requirements.

Quality Management

A Quality Management (QM) module is used to perform call monitoring and pinpoint agent improvement areas. Call centre tools enables managers to upload call recordings into the QM tool where quality managers review the customer calls and assess agent performance against pre-set criteria.

Based on the QM assessments, call centre managers can conduct targeted one-on-one training sessions to enhance an agent’s service delivery. This contributes to increasing call resolutions and higher customer satisfaction rates.

Integration with Workforce Management tools

Advanced call centre technology provides open APIs for a range of workforce management systems. This integration uses historical data to forecast the number of future incoming calls, calculate required staffing levels to meet customer demand and create rosters for all customer service agents.

Upcoming Call Centre Technology Trends

It is beyond doubt that call centre technology is moving toward greater automation and enhanced self-service. Here are the key trends transforming call centre software:

Embracing Automation and Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Innovations in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NLP) are redefining the way businesses interact with their customers.

How are these two fast-evolving technologies advancing call centre technology?

AI-powered virtual assistants and chatbots are being implemented to handle routine, standard customer enquiries, allowing call centre agents to focus on more complex tasks.

Chatbots use Natural Language Processing and Conversational AI to understand questions and recognise intent. When paired with Machine Learning, responses improve over time by identifying nuances in human dialogue, resulting in more accurate resolutions and conversations that feel almost human-like.

Intelligent call routing systems use AI to analyse previous interactions and associated customer data to understand the context behind customers enquiries. This tool applies the knowledge built to automate the call routing process, optimising operational efficiency and enable support teams to deliver better service.

Facilitating Omnichannel Experiences

Businesses are constantly looking for new ways to streamline customer journeys and eliminate data silos.

Omnichannel customer experiences occur when agents can seamlessly transition a customer interaction from one channel to another, without losing conversation history. Central to this, is an omnichannel call centre solution.

Imagine an agent is logged onto the call centre solution and responds to a customer’s enquiry on the channel, WhatsApp. Leveraging omnichannel functionality, the agent switches the interaction from WhatsApp to a Voice call within the same browser, maintaining continuity of the conversation.

Enhancements to call centre software will unite all communication channels into a single view, facilitating true omnichannel customer experiences.

Navigating Remote and Hybrid Team Dynamics

Cloud based solutions enable call centre agents to work easily and productively from any location. Managers monitor activity and oversee the performance of their hybrid teams through the call centre tool’s reporting module, which reveals real-time activity data and tracks KPIs.

When navigating remote team dynamics, business leaders can find it challenging to motivate staff and monitor their wellbeing. To address this, managers can virtually unite hybrid teams by conducting regular team building sessions via video meetings. As hybrid working is the new ‘normal’, call centre technology is evolving in response, converging with Unified Communication (UC) applications, providing businesses with an end-to-end platform for both internal and external interactions.

Leveraging Analytics for Enhanced Service Quality

Call centres are increasingly harnessing the wealth of data from previous customer interactions to derive actionable insights that can be used to enhance service quality.

With Speech Analytics and QA analysis tools, businesses can monitor changing customer sentiments, dissect recorded calls and pinpoint improvement areas. Customer experience leaders can leverage the findings from the analytics tools to make data-informed decisions such as optimising self-service options.

Prioritising Security, Ethics, and Transparency

As more and more businesses implement artificial intelligence and machine learning, clear explanations of how automated systems aid customers throughout their interaction is paramount to maintain ethical, transparent operations.

Key Considerations when choosing Call Centre Technology

The top considerations when evaluating between different call centre solutions include:

Scalability

Determine whether the solution can scale up or down according to your business needs.

Services offered

Assess the services the call centre solution provider offers such as 24/7 support, training and professional services.

Ease of use

The easier it is for your call centre agents to use the platform, the more seamless it will be for them to deliver exceptional customer service and engage with sales leads.

Security

The number of data breaches is increasingly rising and call centres handle personal information frequently. To protect your customers’ personal information, ensure the call centre vendor encrypts customer data and stores it locally.

Analytics & Reporting

When assessing call centre software options, you should be aware of what data you want to collect and track. Without considering this, the solution chosen may not satisfy business needs or could provide an incomplete view across the customer journey.

Multichannel communication

Every customer has unique communication preferences, influencing which channel they prefer to interact on. Ensure the call centre solution enables your business to engage customers across email, web chat, SMS, social media and over the phone.

Features powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI-powered call centre features optimise operational efficiency and decrease cost to serve. For instance, AI Virtual Assistants and Chatbots streamline workflows and automate customer interactions. This will result in a reduction in administrative tasks for agents while minimising human error.

Unlock the value of Call Centre Technology with IPscape

IPscape combines the latest trends in call centre software with essential features including a sophisticated outbound dialler, an Intelligent IVR, call recording and analytics, equipping your customer support and sales teams with the right tools to operate productively, deliver incredible customer experiences and maximise sales opportunities.

Contact IPscape today to view a demo of our award-winning call centre software, SCAPE, and see how easy it is to create omnichannel customer experiences and automate customer interactions while operating securely.

Organisations use IPscape’s communication technology platform, SCAPE, to unlock growth by building personalised communication with customers at scale, through their channel of choice.