6 major challenges internal contact centers are facing

? Many companies, regardless of industry, are questioning the value of developing (or keeping) an internalized call center ...

The main challenges faced by internal contact centres are technical and human. Digitalisation of the customer relationship further complicates the situation. It is increasingly difficult to meet the new expectations of consumers in acceptable economic conditions.

First, the technological challenge:

• Investing for the suite of technological developments to the benefit of the customer experience ...

Tools for customer feedback, monitoring of social networks, delivered quality control, workforce management : they all need to complement the more traditional tools (ACD, , CRM, mail processing, etc ...) with the new technologies for contact centres which seem to appear at an accelerating pace. When a customer calls, we must know immediately if he/she has had a past experience before, or has put a post on Facebook etc, and after the call, an assessment of the customer's voice not only of the experience but also their opinion of the company (NPS).

To meet this technological challenge takes important IT investment, that is not necessarily the priority of companies where customer relationship is not historically in their list of priorities.

So be quoted almost € 2,000 to 3.000 € to equip a customer service station able to meet the challenge of digital customer relationship is a challenge. This is not counting the recurring costs associated with the use of new solutions "in the cloud" - 50,000 to 100,000 euros per year for example for a chat software, or a "customer feedback" program. Those needs are constantly evolving with the digital transformation and the arrival of chatbots, or voice analysis technology.

• and still invest to comply with safety standards and regulations which are becoming increasingly strict ...

These investments are not only driven by competition and customer requirements of today : they are sometimes simply constrained by various regulations.

As for the credit card payments, as part of distance selling, by telephone or on the Internet, setting the PCI-DSS security standards can cost up to 300,000 euros depending on the number of positions to equip and model adopted. New RGPD rules need also to identify expertise and means to ensure strict compliance.

A centre that wishes to conduct telemarketing campaigns must also deploy dialling tools and expensive database management if it is to comply with legislation becoming stricter, with fines that can go up to several hundred thousand euros.

Then the human challenge !

• Developing the flexibility to absorb variations in the flow of contacts

Basically, this challenge of flexibility is one faced by all contact centres, regardless of size, at different stages of their development.

The volume of contacts and arrival patterns, and therefore the size of the teams that support them, is extremely difficult to predict. In addition to the typical seasonal activities, call peaks can occur for many reasons. It is very difficult for an internal centre of 20 employees to recruit almost overnight 10 employees more because the business demands it. Conversely, lower volumes related to the digitalization of customer contacts, requires and adjustment to lower resource numbers.

• Develop and retain its best resources by offering concrete prospects and a real career path

It is the social challenge: how to propose, in a reduced size contact centre, real opportunities for employees? True social engineering is required to manage the social climate. But, when there is no possible development on one site, the call centre becomes difficult to control. Motivation decreases, turnover/attrition increases, productivity drops and KPIs fall.

• Recruit and train experts able to manage the new digital channels

Once a chat program, a connection to social networks has been installed ... we must still act as professionals to drive these new tools. This challenge requires expertise targeting recruitment of highly sought after profiles and regular investments in training and development

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As shown, technically in human terms, internal contact centres face many challenges. The transition from traditional customer relationships with the customer experience more frequently measured and valued amplifies these difficulties, and with cycles becoming shorter, it is difficult to master when you do not have a critical centre size ?