Call centers are an important part of today’s
business landscape but have always struggled with a reputational problem.
Legacy issues such as cheesy Muzak while kept on hold, insincere messages about
the importance of the call, automated menu options which lead nowhere, hard
sell techniques, offshoring and premium phone numbers have contributed to a
negative perception that is out of sync with the reality of what call centers
today are capable of delivering.
The travel industry was one of the first industries
to adopt call centers as a sales channel, not dissimilar to how travel was one
of the first to start selling tickets over the internet. And while we tend to
embrace and relish our early adopter role as one of e-commerce’s most forward
thinking and dynamic sectors, we’re more circumspect about call centers. This
is despite many travel companies introducing working practices – and
technological innovations – to their call centers, which other verticals are
more than keen to learn from. At the same time, we are doubling down on efforts
to improve processes and functionalities specific to travel.
According
to the latest research, the market for enterprise-grade call center
technology will be worth just shy of $80 billion by 2029, up from $27 billion
in 2021. There is a lot of investor interest in providing the tools for
businesses to run their call centers more efficiently, and this interest is
growing in response to demand – during COVID, call centers came under a lot of
pressure which reinforced how important they are as a channel for customer
service as well as sales.
The pressure on travel call centers during the
pandemic reflected how much pressure the industry was under, and as the dust
settles on those difficult years, some home truths are emerging. Call centers
coped well but, in many instances, could have performed better. And the first
step towards performing better is knowing more about your performance in the
first place.
It is quite a surprise, to me, that many big
businesses in travel and hospitality are satisfied with basic call center
analytics – number of calls, average duration, response times. These top line
figures can offer some insight but do not provide a depth of data needed to
make material changes to how efficiently a call center can operate.
The technical
advances in voice analysis and transcription to text, combined with
ever-improving machine learning capabilities, means that businesses running
call centers should know exactly what customers are asking and what operators
are saying in response. This can be done automatically, without any manual
interaction needed.
Today, it is relatively straightforward to record
every incoming call and to transcribe the conversation. More difficult is
analyzing the interaction, extracting the relevant data and then implementing
actions based on the insights. However, the last part of the process is well
within the wheelhouse of call center tech specialists.
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The rationale is clear: unless there is a way for
these calls to be recorded and analyzed, with the results presented in simple
and easy-to-understand format, any actionable insights are lost.
And when it comes to insights, it is possible to
identify three degrees of interaction with customers. Some call reasons are not
that complex and can be resolved successfully and automatically using voice
recognition, such as queries about COVID restrictions which can be answered by
pulling the data from the website’s Q&A. Passengers wishing to change
details on an existing booking - just to mention one example - is a bit more
complicated but can be handled effectively using artificial intelligence to
access the transactional systems.
But it is for highly complex queries where the
hybrid approach comes into its own, allowing call center tech to fully flex its
muscles and work in sync with an experienced human agent to provide the best
possible service to customers. Real-time voice recognition can surface
information proactively for the agent, four times more quickly than if he or
she had to key in queries in reaction to what the customer said.
Travel companies will have their own parameters for
what can be dealt with automatically and what needs the input of an expert
agent. Call center technology can be configured to address the specific use
cases of a specific business.
One such
example is happening right now and illustrates the benefits for the business
and for travelers of next-generation call center technology. Flight cancellations
are common in the current climate, and this has a direct impact on cruise
lines, both for fly-cruise packages and also for passengers who book their
flight independently. Call center managers with access to a dashboard providing
AI-driven analysis of call transcripts can identify common themes in customer
calls and empower agents to respond accordingly.
For
example, if the analysis shows that Airline A is announcing flight
cancellations that are impacting departures, agents can be prepared for the
calls to come by having access to Airline B as an alternative. This helps the
solution rate for the call center and the sentiment rating from the client.
This
degree of insight is only possible if all calls are transcribed and
automatically analyzed, with the data presented clearly.
Early advocates of voice recognition and data
analytics have already moved on from analyzing transcripts. Helped by the
ongoing improvement in how different technologies can now talk to each other,
significant improvements are possible. Giving a cruise agent access to
real-time inventory, surfaced automatically in response to what is being said
by the caller, and which can be booked by the agent in the moment - is a recent
and significant improvement on how call centers have traditionally operated.
The travel industry is home to some of the world’s
most successful and innovative e-commerce businesses, helping tens of millions
of people around the world to book and service their trips online. A hybrid
model, where data forms a bridge between the expert agent and cutting-edge
technology, means that the same scale of business can be - and potentially will
be - transacted through call centers.
Therefore, it’s time for the cruise sector and the
wider travel industry to address the possibilities - enhance the customer
experience, empower staff, increase margins - that today’s AI-driven tools can
deliver.