Voice, Chat, Email… Video?

When I first started in this industry a few years ago, one of the first questions that came to mind was the plausibility of outsourced support that featured a live video feed between consumer and agent.

One service delivery model I envisioned at the time had to do with paid search. I thought it would be revolutionary if, as a consumer, you were to scroll over a paid search engine advertisement- and there to assist you was a live person via a video window pop up. This person could invite you into their ecommerce store and could help with placing an order or provide customer service.

I had not given this idea much thought recently until the beginning of the month when in the New York Times I discovered that Google was about to begin testing video ads on search results pages. Now this is not a live link to customer service agents, but I would argue it is definitely a step in that direction.

After reading the Times article, I decided to research ‘video support’ further and it turns out there is a formal term for this technology/service: ‘Interactive Voice and Video Response’. CosmoCom, a provider of contact center technology provides a video demonstration of this type of support here.

IVVR is apart of what industry experts are calling Call Center 2.0.

According to Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) President Rich Tehrani ‘video will play a huge part of call center 2.0. Call centers will video-enable themselves to increase the customer service of phone calls. In some cases conversations will be 2-way video enabled in other cases the benefits of having video calls will be so obvious that all call centers will scramble to show their agent’s faces.’

We have seen call centers become contact centers, and service offerings grow from simple phone support to email and live chat assistance options being available; I wonder if IVVR will be the next big step forward, and I look forward to hearing other people’s thoughts on the matter.

Comments

[Call Center Blogger]

The reality of Video face-to-face contact may not be in for another 5 to 10 years in my opinion.

[madhu]

People in the call center industry have been exploring the idea of integrating Internet Protocol video in the contact center for years and best part of two way communication is its going too easy for verification of both customer and representative. In company aspect they really know the what and wehre is the problem that customer is facing. I think this is a really cool idea.

[Vaibhav]

Today Voice, Chat, Email,Video are the latest way of communication. In Video Google is providing a very good information and if you want to see the live tutorial on line, it is also available on the Google video. To send or to exchange of text information is very easy with the help of the email. Chat is providing you the on site solution. So all these new technology's are helping to promote the business.

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[call center outsourcing]

As new technology today voice, email and video are some of the technique that uses by call center way of communicating to people.., It is fastest way to offer and give companies vision and goal...

[Quote Catcher Call Center]

I know video is where we are headed but I'm not sure how quickly the people being called will jump on board.

[Justin Lofnagel]

I think video between an angent and representitive can be a good thing some good things about it is that you would be abel to know if the client is sincer about the call and also to see if pranking is a foot but some negitive aspects of it could be that the client/buyer maybe sublect to crude and explict behaviour if he/she is pranking or is a perv