To the casual customer, it may seem like few has changed when their call reaches a call center, but just like everything else in this world, things do change – including what is likely considered one of our least favorite customer experiences.

“Contact centers are changing in terms of their strategy and operational delivery,” noted Global Information (News - Alert) Inc. in a statement. The firm further notes three noteworthy call center trends: interactive voice response (IVR) analytics, cloud-based infrastructure and more advanced knowledge management tools.

First, call center performance management tools are capturing and analyzing all aspects of call center performance, which is therefore lping call centers tweak performance.

“Although it has many benefits for agents, contact centers, enterprises, and customers, CCPM's adoption has been slow – a key issue being lack of clarity about its contributions and benefits,” noted Global Information. Total CCPM seats grew from 483,949 in September 2006 to 1,731,138 in April 2012, the company notes.

Second, cloud-based infrastructure in the call center has nearly tripled in the past three years, according to GI – rising from 2.2 percent adoption to 5.9 percent adoption in 2012.

Perhaps most significant, however, has been the evolution in IVR and IVR analytics.

“The global market for IVR has changed and advanced tremendously in recent years, due to improvements in technology and best practices,” Global Information explains, adding that IVR analytics have helped call centers systematically evaluate the whole call, which has thus helped them better optimize their IVR systems.

The technology itself is also making IVR more useful. IVR visual application mapping, for example, has proven itself a vital tool when digging deep into consumer calls and insight, as it helps call center managers to visually lay out their IVR systems to quickly make changes with drag-and-drop ease.

IVR visual application mapping allows prompts to be moved around without writing code, ultimately transforming once complex relationships in the IVR call flow to be more simple and crystal clear, which, of course, leads to better IVR.

Plum Voice’s QuickFuse application editor is a prime example of how excellent IVR visual application mapping can help sophisticate the call center.

With QuickFuse, the call center “starts with a blank canvas and choosing from a list of modules (or what the company examples as ‘options and prompts like ‘start,’ ‘single prompt,’ ‘multipart prompt,’ ‘digits input,’ and ‘hang up’),” according to this informational article. “You then drag the modules onto your blank canvas to build, and lastly, after dragging and dropping the modules, you wire them together – nodes to receptors.”

Taken together, IVR advancements, cloud-based infrastructure and more advanced knowledge management tools are subtly – and sometimes imperceptibly – changing and advancing today’s modern call center.

To learn more about Plum Voice’s IVR offerings, visit www.plumvoice.com. 

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