Given the rapid rise of e-mail and other forms of web-based customer communication, the term “multi-channel contact center” will soon be redundant, predicts a new study by the Incoming Calls Management Institute. The number of traditional call centers that provide support by telephone alone is growing smaller, according to the ICMI’s report, which notes, “When it comes to customer contact, it’s all about being accessible and giving customers choices.”
The 648 contact centers polled supported a variety of industries, with financial services at 19% representing the largest single share. All centers surveyed handled traditional phone calls, but 86% also handle customer e-mail, 16% support web chat, 11% support web callback transactions, and 4% handle VoIP-based web calls. Beyond the 80/20 response ratio reported for responding to phone calls (80% of calls answered within 20 seconds), other common service level/response time objectives reported were 4 hours for e-mail, 90/20 for chat, and 80/20 for response to VoIP web calls.
Half of the centers that supported chat use web collaboration applications such as co-browsing, page-pushing, and form-sharing during chat sessions with customers. 40% of centers handling web calls do so during web call transactions. Only 30% of centers handling web callback transactions use collaboration tools during those transactions.
The survey also found that agents at 62% of centers handling chat handle more than one chat session at a time. 63% of these agents report handing two to three sessions simultaneously, though a few reported handling as many as 10 chat sessions simultaneously.
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