The announcement in July that Zoom intended to merge with Five9 sparked a lot of interest in the use of video in the contact centre. The subsequent announcement that the merger is off leads me to wonder whether another false dawn for the video contact centre might have passed.
Is video happening?
Live video for customer service has been a long time coming, but it’s here now. The retail sector is leading the way with both live and appointment-based customer conversations. For example, if you are looking for a fancy TV then Hughes offer direct conversations with experts.
Is video wanted in the contact centre?
If you ask contact centre managers then you might think not. A recent Call Centre Helper Research Paper – Survey Report: What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now (2021 Edition) – indicates that video chat has grown rapidly in the past year but from a very low base. Whilst almost all respondents ranked Customer Satisfaction as Very or Quite important, the majority concurrently expect that the future is self service and artificial intelligence. Have they asked their customers what they would like?
A poll from Moneysavingexpert shows that consumers strongly favour ‘real-time’ contact centre conversations – three quarters (76%) of respondents prefer phone or live chat.
Is the contact centre ready?
Zoom has made consumers comfortable with video conversations, so your customers are ready. Video channel early adopters demonstrably achieve tangible business benefits – increased sales and reduced cost to serve.
As I’ve worked with the video channel over the decades (Yes, really!) cost & technology has been a huge obstacle. Ubiquitous consumer video cameras combined with specialist Cloud platforms mean that video service can be easily deployed. So the technology is ready. Is your contact centre ready? Are your customers ready? The only way to know is to give it a try. Give me a shout if you need help.