Benchmark Research Finds A Long Road Yet to Travel to Maturity of Contact Centers

Contact centers are in desperate need of technology transformation to meet the demands of their customers and agents, according to landmark research from Ventana Research, which is based on input from almost 500 contact centers in all industry sectors. The research makes clear for the first time the little-understood challenges faced by management, agents and customers in trying to navigate the landscape of immature processes, lack of information readiness, siloed applications and outmoded technology involved in the typical multi-channel contact center.

Applying the Ventana Research Maturity Index, the research found that more than half of organizations' contact centers are currently at the Tactical level of maturity, the lowest of the four levels. Although many centers now support multiple channels of communications only a few can track interactions across channels and even then it is typically only for traditional channels like telephone, interactive voice response (IVR) systems and e-mail. The analysis placed only 11 percent of the centers at the highest Innovative level because they have integrated new channels of customer interactions, are utilizing knowledge management to support agents and use advanced analytics to guide customer experience management. On the wish list for those contact centers aspiring to mature, the research found, are speech and social media analytics and real time agent analytics.

The research found much potential for improvement in the typical contact center. Among the possible improvements are optimizing the system using modern tools and process; only one in five companies have done so. Also, more than half of contact centers have deployed eight different applications including quality management (79%), workforce management (67%), customer feedback management (59%) and CRM (57%), leaving substantial room for integration. With respect to knowledge management, two-thirds of organizations indicated it is very important to successful customer management yet only 43 percent have implemented a knowledge management system.

More contact center research can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com.