Technology plays a critical role in the call center’s ability to improve customer service. But with technology for the call center emerging at an exponential rate, it is critical to stay up to date on the latest offerings to ensure that your organization can retain a competitive edge. So what have been the biggest trends in call center technology for 2018? Let’s take a closer look below:

Natural Language Understanding Chatbots:

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is the technology behind conversational customer service chatbots. NLU makes finding answers, staying informed and accomplishing everyday tasks effortless. The result is a better customer experience by removing the frustration of rigid automated interactions. Well-designed customer support chatbots empower customers, improve employee satisfaction and help companies deliver exceptional service while reducing costs.

Call Center Performance Analytics:

Call centers aggregate more customer data than any other department within your organization. But there’s a big difference between information and intelligence. Simply aggregating data will not give you the context you need to provide robust support. By integrating automated analytics tools, data analytics turns information into intelligence that can be acted upon, giving actionable information to ensure that call center agents can provide comprehensive customer service.

Social Media Customer Service:

Social media channels continue to grow at an astounding rate. As consumers flock to these sites, they are leaning on brands to provide customer support. With capabilities like live-streaming, savvy business are putting more resources into providing seamless, integrated omni-channel customer support including across social channels.

IVR Self-Service:

Self-service has also continued to boom in the beginning of 2018. Businesses with the greatest customer satisfaction rates are integrating automated self-service offerings like IVR and ITR, empowering customers to resolve their own issues without speaking to an call center agent. This has continued to extend out into proactive outreach as well.

Sourced by: https://www.aspect.com/solutions/call-center/call-center-trends-2017