The era when enterprises drove technology usage trends and customer communication is drawing to a close. The consumerization of technology has had a far-reaching impact on the consumer engagement model.  Today’s consumers are looking for a single source for coordination and expect consistency in customer experience with loyalty recognition and rewards as part of a standard experience, rather than the mono-directional approach to customer service of in- and out-bound communication. In view of this trend, contact centres can no longer be isolated on the basis of so called ‘in-bound’ and ‘out-bound’ centres. The emphasis is being placed on serving the consumer well, which until now, had to be done within the narrow parameters of service being dictated by the capabilities of the contact centre.

Organizations are under extreme pressure to enhance the customer service experience while at the same time, reduce costs. Businesses run the risk of losing customers as a result of dissatisfaction with their contact centre interactions. They need to adapt to consumer demands and evaluate their current contact centre offerings.

A large number of firms are now investing in new and innovative methods of communication and interaction that have come from the consumer world – SMS, Twitter, Facebook and smartphone applications; tools that have till now been difficult for the corporate world to adopt and integrate into their contact centre set-ups. The aim now is for a new form of contact centre – one that represents an open and accessible environment and a place where businesses can really add value to customer interactions – to create an end-to-end customer experience.

Businesses are responding by using technology to hold on to the customers by making them the central point of any interaction, and bringing experts, managers or administrative support to the customer rather than moving the customer from point-to-point. This is helping reduce the need for customers to repeat basic information, increasing speed of resolution and generally improving customer service. Social Media integration enables enterprises to focus on meaningful social media interactions through existing contact centre infrastructures.

The recent Avaya 2011 Contact Centre Index survey showed that more than one third of consumers indicated that they prefer to use other methods such as web chat and web self-service, in communicating with their contact centre. The research further indicated how important these newer modes of communication have become. The traditional desk or home phone is in fact falling out of favour with consumers in relation to methods such as web chat and web self-service. Businesses need to anticipate the changing needs of consumers and shift to an architecture based on STANDARDS – such as SIP. SIP is an open-standards protocol, offering IP multi-media support. Using an open based SIP architecture, businesses can achieve tighter interoperability between people, systems and information thereby ‘Enabling Effective and Contextual Collaboration’.

Technology is also the mechanism that is making it easier for customers to share their experience with the rest of the world. If a customer is sharing any negative experience via Twitter or Facebook, companies who are more social network savvy are able to manage the situation. These are the ‘smarter’ firms which recognize that social media has to be a two-way dialogue and it has to be ‘real time’.

As the contact centre scenario evolves, ‘smarter’ organizations will need to ensure that they address customer concerns of speed convenience and above all, customer experience to turn a one-time interaction into a lifelong relationship.

Mohammed Hayath is the Head of Contact Center Sales, India & SAARC, Avaya.