CALL CENTER TRENDS FOR 2022

 

Like most worldwide industries, the call center industry experiences its fair share of trends and innovations each year. This year is no exception, and there is no lack of call center trends to take advantage of in 2022.

 

Intelligent Call Routing

Intelligent call routing, or ICR, is designed to increase the efficiency of call centers. Its goal is to improve the overall caller experience and provide businesses facing high call volumes with enhanced responsiveness, accuracy, and speed.

Advanced IVR

Part of intelligent call routing is IVR, or interactive voice response. This call routing is available for call centers now, but is predicted to grow in the next ten years – matching customers with the right experts/customer service representatives almost instantly based on their responses to automated questions.

 

Customized Greetings, Voicemails, and Prompts

Customization is a popular trend for 2022, providing customers a personalized experience with your business. Customizable greetings, voicemail, and prompt tools allow you to personalize your phone system. It is beneficial to emphasize essential instructions, provide menu prompts, and promote your branding and current specials/promotions.

 

Ring Groups

A ring group is a way for a business to route calls to the accurate department or representative intelligently. This allows those within your customer service department or call center to take quick action on ongoing calls – transferring them to other representatives or a separate device. With this advanced feature, several lines can be rung or in a specific order, such as sequentially. This strategy helps your business’s customer service team distribute calls effectively and never miss an inquiry.

 

Call Flow Builder

This intelligent call-routing tool allows your business to create customizable call flows. It offers complete control over the call process and how it travels through your call center’s system. A well-built call flow design improves caller experience and streamlines communications.

 

Distributed Workforce and Varying Schedules

Call centers belong to an industry that is required to be available 24 hours a day and, as such, are focused on employing representatives with a wide range of availability. One of the many call center trends for 2022 has been a more significant focus on hiring employees that are willing/available to work outside of regular business hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cause of this call center trend began when businesses worldwide scrambled to set up remote working environments at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, many industries have recognized the advantages of adopting work-from-home and hybrid office-home work models. Now, remote working and working from home have become standard across several industries, especially call centers. This work model has opened the door for varying schedules and increased customer service shifts outside normal work hours.

 

 

Analytics

 

Data analytics seems to be one of those call center trends that appears every year. Like the industry, analytics are constantly changing – new statistics to consider and practices to measure effectiveness. While data analytics have been around for a while, this year will likely see an increase in the number of managers using analytical tools for call center operations. This is due to call center metrics such as call handling times, service levels, and call abandonment rates being able to measure agent productivity and hasten response times.

The call center trend of data analytics provides a business with essential information regarding inquiring customers. Key performance indicators (KPIs) display trends and patterns about callers, call-handling processes, and bottlenecks that influence queue times and customer service. With the availability of more powerful service software and e-commerce data, businesses will be optimizing KPIs like never before. The analyzed metrics directly reflect a call center’s efficiency. Additionally, they can be easily compared to industry benchmarks in terms of goal setting.

 

Personalized Interactions

This seems to be common among call centers, but it’s also one of the call center trends for 2022 that is receiving considerable focus. Customers still want personalized interactions and often determine who receives their business based on what kind of interactions they receive. Automation and self-service tools are helpful for customers, but many expect brand communication to feel somewhat personal. Businesses that emphasized personalized customer interactions reported a 33% increase in customer loyalty and engagement. These personal interactions can range from using customer names and suggesting products based on purchase history to remembering personal details and speaking in a customer’s preferred language.

Customer-centric approaches are vital for a business, and these should also be deployed in the customer service technology they utilize. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning can help businesses and human representatives retain and leverage data to make personalization easier.

In 2022, we are likely to see an accelerated move toward hyper-personalization. In a hyper-personalized customer experience, every interaction is based on a deep understanding of that customer’s needs at that exact moment based on their relationship with the brand.