I enjoyed the article regarding the "internet and your call center career".
For my part I believe you must look at the internet as an emerging channel for customer interaction, just as the call centre employs the phone for the same purpose. To not view 'holistically' each and every interaction channel will mean that you will be ill equiped to meet the needs of your customers.
Customer interaction channels today include;
Inbound calls,
Outbound calls,
IVR,
Snail Mail,
email,
fax,
Web chat,
ICQ,
Instant messaging
Call centre operators should embrace the opportunity to transform their facility from a call centre to contact centre by offering and supporting as many of these channels as is apppropriate to their customer base.
Consider some of the following factoids;
1- Email volume equals call volume in some technical contact centres (according to ASP)
2-Webchat accounts for almost 10% of total traffic in some contact centres (my own experience operating an outsourcer)
3-ICQ and IM channels are emerging as relevant especially to gen X/Y.
To ignore these trends, (which, while they will never eliminate the voice calls will reduce there domination over the next decade), will carry on regardless of the call centre operators POV. Companies will continue to strive for more efficient and effective operations. This can mean outsourcing and/or offshoring, but can also mean leveraging technology to reduce costs; FAQ's virtual agents, speech recognition, Community management, ICQ, IM, webchat, click to talk, email, VoIP, home agents etc. The vast majority of the aforementioned channels are internet centric.
My advice to all call centre operators and staff...Take off the blinders, stop talking about call centres and start speaking about customer interactions at any point and you will be speaking about Contact Centres. Prepare to meet the future.
I hope this adds some value to the discussion. If I can be of any further assistance, please feel free to email me at
ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com.
Colin