Company contact technology often seems to do the reverse of what was intended. There's a joke in which a company's automated answering system advises “To press two, press one....” “Modern” telephone accessed call centers can leave customers pressing different options in an endless, desperate quest for assistance until they hang up in disgust, or leaving those customers waiting forever for a helpful voice to come on the line. The Kingdom is a little behind in the various types of technologies used by local call centers - which should more appropriately named “contact centers.” Social media, online chat, SMS, email, video, as well as voice, are all technologies that can be employed by contact centers to help consumers get the information or service they require. “Companies in the Kingdom need to move away from generic call center requirements,” said Abdul Nasser Bangcola, country manager, Saudi Arabia at Interactive Intelligence. “We see many Saudi enterprises using consultants from outside Saudi Arabia to write their call center requirements or getting their IT staff to write a technology requirement for the call center. Setting up a contact center begins with understanding the needs of the customers who will use it and considering the business requirements of the organization. Only then is it appropriate to select the technology.” Contact center operations need to be aligned to the overall vision of an organization, carefully taking into account the nature of the service offering and the needs of the target customers. Ultimately, the contact center is the voice of the brand, and should be operated in a manner that dovetails seamlessly with the overall brand personality. For instance, an online gaming website should be handling customer queries in a very different manner to that of a bank, but they both should be fulfilling customer action items rapidly to ensure customer satisfaction. “Banks and large companies in Saudi Arabia have begun to realize that the customer experience with the contact center is very important for customer retention,” commented Bangcola. “If a customer is stuck for ten minutes, holding on a telephone line to get information from the call center, then this will negatively impact the image of the company.” “In fact the global trend is to move away from speaking to a person at a contact center and having the confidence that an action item will happen though a web or mobile application,” added Shaheen Haque, Turkey & Middle East Territory Manager, Interactive Intelligence. “We aren't there yet in the Middle East. Companies must bring in new contact technologies and then encourage their customers to use those technologies, perhaps by giving rewards or special offers. We've seen that customers can be a little hesitant to use a new technology but once they try it they get hooked. They often find that they can get the information or service they need much faster than waiting on the phone for a customer service representative. That saves everyone time and money.” A contact center isn't just about the technology. Haque advised that the soft skills of the staff interacting with the customer are very important. However, those skills can be supported through new technologies. “Interactive Intelligence has the latest speech analytics technology. This is very useful technology because it can identify customers who are angry by the emotional character of their speech and the words they say,” he explained. “Speech analytics can be used either to flag calls for later review or in real time. When a representative is on the line with a customer, if the speech analytics system detects that the customer is upset – perhaps due to specific words such as ‘cancel,' the system will alert a trouble shooter or supervisor to come and help the agent with the call and recover the situation.” The Saudi public is well traveled. They see the advanced customer services provided by businesses and governments in other countries and they want to experience those at home. Consumers in the Kingdom, like consumers everywhere, want to feel that the companies they support are sensitive to customer requirements. “Gaining new customers is very, very difficult and expensive. So it's much better to keep the customer you already have through excellent customer service,” Haque said. “Customers in the Middle East have begun to realize their power, especially with so many companies vying for market share. That's why companies need to invest in their contact centers and take those operations very seriously.”
