Call centers continued to experience growing pains this past week, but in a good way. Here are the latest updates:
Businesses around the world are increasingly focusing on customers because they understand the importance of having happy and satisfied customers for their business. Over the last few years, call centers have seen rapid levels of growth and this in turn, has created employment opportunities for thousands of people, especially in the Philippines. But as call centers increase their staff, there are a lot of questions surrounding labor laws and rules for these employees. The biggest question is whether it is necessary for BPO (business process outsourcing) workers to organize themselves into unions to push for safer and healthier working conditions. But the BPO industry as a whole is not open to the idea of allowing employees to form unions because they fear this can make them less competitive. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Meanwhile, Aspect Software, which provides an integrated solution for contact center management, believes that it can help its customers better only by improving itself; and by deploying Salesforce Service Cloud, a cloud-based customer knowledge delivery technology, it expects to boost all its service and support practices including people, processes, knowledge and collaboration. By giving agents an improved 360 degree view of the customer and issues, right from sales through support, the company believes it can reduce churn, improve customer service, boost loyalty and increase revenue. With personalized, targeted and secured content, users can be more specifically addressed depending on their behavioral patterns.
In other news, banks all over the world are offering customers quicker and more secure ways of handling payments. Many of them have introduced online and mobile banking options in response to customer demand, and Emirates Islamic (EI), an Islamic financial institution based in Dubai, looks to follow suit by encouraging its customers to move towards online and mobile banking. EI is hoping to increase its levels of online and mobile bill payments and is tempting its customers to pay bills using their mobile app or online banking portal by offering a few lucky members the chance to win a new iPad Mini. The member with the highest number of online transactions will walk off with the prize.
Be sure to check back with us daily for the latest updates in the Call Center Services arena.