Voice in the Contact Center. It’s Worth Talking About.

A contact center research commentary co-authored by Paul Stockford and Abby Monaco

ABBY: I think the most beautiful part of voice is song. As I was walking around the gorgeous city center of Toronto recently, I listened to my favorite tunes – the perfect enhancement to my experience. In the past few years, there has been speculation that younger, up and coming generations will no longer view the voice channel as their primary mode of communication. But ask any person, of any age, how they feel about music. Some of us would lose a part of our very existence without it! So why would we go so wrong as to think that our most basic method of communication would no longer be preferable?

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Paul Stockford, Principal and Founder of Saddletree Research, about this topic. Rather than keep his statistical and carefully researched responses to my inquiries to myself, I suggested that he write about it with me here.

PAUL: Abby, I think I could get you to refute that first statement of yours.  If you heard me sing, you'd change your mind!  My first memory of trying to sing was at about age 12.  I was so awful the music teacher put a harmonica in my mouth and told me to learn that instead.   I did, and still play to this day.  In fact, I play harmonica in a band every weekend, but that's a story for another blog.

I do agree with your second premise, though.  The idea that voice in the contact center is going to go away is just not feasible.  Even with all the industry talk of the digital transformation and the digital customer, the fact is that people will still pick up the phone when they need customer service, and that's reflected in the number of contact centers that support voice traffic.

As you know, Saddletree Research works with the not-for-profit National Association of Call Centers (NACC) each year to survey the contact center end-user community to gauge their attitudes and intentions toward a number of industry trends and issues.  We also gather basic industry information, including which customer communications channels are supported.  All of our data is statistically valid at a 95 percent confidence level and a margin of error of 4 percent.

It shouldn't be a surprise that inbound phone is supported by 97.9 percent of the North American contact center industry today.  And that number falls within our margin of error so my guess is that the actual number is closer to 100 percent.  While digital channel support is growing, it still doesn't come close to inbound phone support.  For example, the closest digital channel support behind phone is e-mail at 88.6 percent penetration.  Beyond that, web chat is resident at nearly 61 percent of contact centers, then the digital channel penetration rates drop considerably.  Twitter support is only at about 25 percent and text/SMS support at about 32 percent.

ABBY:  Wouldn't it be possible to read into those numbers that even though voice support is high, traffic is actually shifting to digital channels?  We know the phones are there, but are they getting the volume of calls that they used to?

PAUL:  Good point, and one that we wanted to find out for ourselves.  So, we asked specifically about any changes in the average handle time (AHT) of calls and, more importantly, the volume of calls coming in.

First, we found that AHT is about the same or increasing for about 73 percent of the industry.  So, you could argue that AHT is increasing because only the most complex problems are going to telephone agents and the rest of customer service needs are being fulfilled by self-service or digital channels.

To confirm or refute that argument, we also asked about the volume of calls in 2019 as compared to 2018.  We were surprised to find that the expected major volume shift to digital channels didn't materialize.  Only 30 percent of our research participants reported a decrease in call volume in the last year.  31.4 percent reported no change in phone traffic over the last year and 38.6 percent actually reported an increase in the volume of customer phone calls in the last year.

ABBY: Those are some interesting findings. Perhaps we should discuss more in another blog! I guess it is fair to conclude that not only is voice not going away any time soon, it isn't getting effectively replaced by other channels. So while many new channels are appreciated and used by customers, anything that isn't easy or straight forward will require a customer service representative.

Many thanks for this informative exchange, Paul! Let's do it again soon!

For more information about NICE Nexidia products visit our webpage.