English
Doug Green:
I mentioned earlier in the podcast that the crisis may have changed the way a lot of companies did their business and especially in the contact center. Everyone had to go distributed. Did you experience change during the course of the crisis?
This article is part of Steve’s interview with Doug Green.
Listen to it here:
Steve Bederman:
Huge change. And immediate change. So, back in March – what we saw – and we see this, right? Because as the carrier side we’re getting all of the activity. And you saw an immediate decline in outbound calling. Just a precipitous drop-off. And at the same time there was a balancing that came about six weeks later to where you could see that drop stabilize and a literal increase in inbound traffic.
So, in truth, today, some months later, our inbound traffic is at its highest level it’s ever been. And our outbound traffic is at the level that it was a year ago. So, in truth, our volume now is actually up, with the same group of clients.
What to me that says is really the agility of a contact center. Imagine this: taking your business overnight and shifting it. You know: inbound business has always been attractive to most contact centers. But it’s highly competitive and you have be very good at it to optimize those phone calls. It’s competitive and not everybody gets it. It’s one of the reasons you’ll see a lot of outbound traffic.
Suddenly, you see the same contact centers that have been doing outbound, converting to inbound so quickly. I just admire the heck out of them, to tell you the truth!
People Are Taking the Time to Look at their Systems
I will also say this: It’s been a time where people are taking the time to look at technology, to look at their infrastructure and their environment. Whether they had been going to a remote approach or staying with their environment. But they’re looking at things now and they’re not only looking at costs, but they’re looking at “are they using what they need to be using?”
We’re getting a high level of demonstrations of our call center technology right now. A lot of interest into how we can transition people to our carrier system, add cost savings to people, they’re looking a lot. I would tell you that our pipeline is full, maybe as full as it’s ever been.
At the same time, people are deliberately now making decisions before they agree to something new. In other words: people nowadays are not ready in mass to buy new things, but they’re ready to look at new things and you’ll see for us a trickling of steady but deliberate growth.
So the last thing I would focus on during the pandemic is: it’s obvious that during the pandemic a lot of contact centers had to get home. They can do that with our technology. They can do it with most of the industry’s technology. But the question which will be hanging out there is:
Will they continue to stay at home?
Or will they find a way to get back to their hard end sites?
Or will there be a hybrid?
Those are the questions that I think we don’t know the answer to and we’ll be looking at. Everybody should be looking at it as the future unfolds.
What’s your opinion on what Steve said and how have you seen changes in your business? We’re eager to learn more in the comments, and so are our readers!
To listen to the entire interview featuring Steve, go back to the top of the page and click play!
