Maximizing VoIP Benefits in the Call Center

Almost half of the call centers in Asia will use voice over Internet Protocol systems by the end of next year, according to new research. A report from the Yankee Group says that despite VoIP adoption lagging behind earlier predictions, the call center market is embracing the technology. Forty-seven percent of call centers are expected to roll out VoIP by 2007, compared with just 17 percent in 2005. The key reasons for using the new technology are to manage multiple call center sites cheaply and flexibly, and to be able to place agents anywhere, including at home. The largest call centers--those with more than 500 seats--will see the greatest increase in VoIP adoption from now until the end of 2007, the analyst firm predicts. Though VoIP for the enterprise has been much hyped in recent years, Yankee Group said adoption has not met its predictions.

The new VoIP platforms offer appealing features, such as a quick connect function. This feature helps to reduce abandon rates by connecting the call with the agent prior to connecting with the customer, thus eliminating the lengthy pauses associated with dialer-generated calls that many customers associate with incoming sales calls. Another function that many VoIP switches support is automatic recording, so a company can capture 100 percent of its calls. Companies can also automate many of their internal processes, and use the customer intelligence captured to refine and enhance its customer service and sales initiatives. Contact center agents can be trained via best practice interactions, which are captured and later organized via the VoIP recording component. As a result, improvements in contact center service quality and front line supervisor productivity become more possible.

The potential benefits that unified communications offers include improved productivity and lower operating costs. Employees will be able to respond to messages instantly regardless of where they originate; businesses will be able to cut their communications cost because they will rely on fewer components. Unified communications meshes well with the growing variety of user inputting devices. While there has a great deal of progress with using VoIP in the call center, there are still a few barriers to adoption. Many companies do not have the infrastructure to support the new devices. In many cases, CRM hardware is a long-term investment, one spanning several years, so companies may have to wait months or even years before being able to re-examine their infrastructure. Yet, those shortcomings are viewed as short-term issues. Many companies are now using VoIP to enhance their CRM deployment and many more will be joining them during the new year.