Why every call center in the Philippines must focus on talent and technology?

It's already 2014 and every call center in the Philippines must start reviewing its business strategies. The contact center world is fast-changing and there's no time for repeating the same errors and blunders of the past year.

According to American information technology research and advisory firm Gartner, talent and technology will drive business process consulting and outsourcing services in 2014. So, what does this mean?

The advantage of having advanced technologies

Today, it's no longer advisable to just focus on traditional ways of providing customer service. While there are still customers who prefer directly calling a hotline, the number of consumers who would rather chat or email than speak to a customer sales representatives is increasing.

The year 2014 is the year of multi-channel services, and sticking to traditional means will just leave a call center behind its competitors. Now that every call center in the Philippines and from all over the globe aim to capture consumers who communicate with the brands through social media networks, it's important to have capable technologies to pull off such endeavor. Implementing a social media-geared customer service involved fast and reliable network connections, and up-to-date computers and accompanying software. 

Technology also helps call centers predict and respond to customer questions. There are even various business tools developed to track and store content-specific historical data and results directed to address customer issues.

For example, having a voice analysis software enables customer sales representatives determine caller's moods and alert managers to seek help for handling ill-tempered customers. This works the same way as real-time speech analytics that alerting supervisors the moment it detects that the customer is getting upset or angry. These technologies provide detailed information no manual technique or experienced agent could determine; it can blur out the thin line between irritated and furious, or satisfied and elated.

Technology makes contact center operations faster, which is very important to its nature of business. With this, it can accommodate more calls, which it can use to market its product or obtain more sales.

Why talent will play an essential role this year

Global economic growth will introduce new levels of competition for business around the globe which will cause people to change jobs and seek for different opportunities. Alongside this, technology will make the world smaller and more connected, which will prompt businesses to seek for faster and more advance means to deliver their service. The combination of these two occurrence will make career growth in call centers (or any business, for that matter) challenging, forcing human resources organizations to continuously innovate to cope with the incessant changes.

Talent will play an integral role in the entire world commerce, and every call center in the Philippines must take note of it. More people who are knowledgeable of the new language called "social media" are needed so that businesses could meet the changing landscape of customer service. IT professionals will be in-demand, as the progresses in mobile technology will need their talent, especially in maintaining and monitoring modern customer service platforms. This includes human-like apps, live chat software, and social media inbound customer service.

In the words of Forbes contributor Josh Bersin, this will be the first time in this decade that retention, engagement, and attraction of talent will be on every business's priority. Every call center now must give high importance to its hiring process and research faculty, as the former will give them future talented employees, while the latter will be vital in knowing which technology it needs to deliver exemplary customer service solutions.

Open Access BPO is a fast-rising outsourcing firm located in Makati, Philippines. Know more about our other services by visiting our website or by joining us on Google+.