When Will Telecom Innovation Breach the Call Center Silo? Shai Berger, Fonolo

Shai BergerCEO, Fonolo@shaiberger

When Will Telecom Innovation Breach the Call Center Silo?

Call centers “sat out” the voice revolution of 2005-2015

2005: “Voice 2.0”

And the “grown-up” version, CEBP (comm enabled biz

processes)

+ low-cost termination =

2010: CPaaS

owned by part of part of

IPO

part of

?Vonage

Why are call centers unfriendly to innovation?

In no particular order:• Technical difficulty• Mission critical nature• Historical vendor culture• Indirect sales/service model• Outsourcing

Result:The call center experience remains largely stuck in the past… and people HATE IT.

Source: Consumer Reports

What Customer Service Problems Cause the Most Frustration?

Scale 0-10, with 10 being the most annoying.

say “just ONE unpleasant contact center experience is likely to make me take my business elsewhere.”

Source: YouGov

76%

Tweet Venting!

Source: onholdwith.com

“Cloud” Will Save Us, Right?

Not really.

Source: CCIQ’s 2016 Executive Contact Center Report.

65% drop in pure on-prem!

But pure cloud still only 22%

More importantly…Not all cloud is “cloud”

And…cloud does not mean open.

Maybe smartphones will save us?

call center smartphone

But how do you connect these two islands?

Sadly this is the most common answer

Maybe WebRTC will save us?

Amazon MaydayOne touch access to live agent conversation with 1-way video.Lots of attention from the press.But! Amazon is in a unique position:

1. Total control over: Device hardware, platform & network.2. Nearly unlimited budget.

WebRTC has had minimal impact on call centers*

Added failure points

Advantages?

* From a customer-facing perspective

Isn’t voice declining as a channel anyway?

In some ways, yes

Source: Dimension Data

Non-voice channels are account for 35% of all interactions today and will overtake voice by 2018.

In some ways, no

Source: Contact Babel

Beware of analysts (and vendors) talking about percentage of

“interactions” happening over channel “X”.

There is no agreed-upon way to count “interactions”.

Some cold water…People employed as

“Customer Service Representatives”

Some amazing innovation ishappening…

Sadly limited to top sliver of companies

These are “one-off” projects that take significant resources.

Not scalable to the (very) long tale of call centers.

Huge opportunity ! !

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@shaiberger@fonolo