Inbound calls are not dead yet!

Posted by Alexis Powell on June 26th, 2017

Phone calls have made their mark for quite a long time, but with the emergence of social media and its large and wide crowd inbound call seems to be declining at a fast rate. For decades customer’s preferred to ring a company’s call centre to register a complaint or seek technical help. The emergence of email, Facebook, twitter and other social media is changing the role played by phone calls a few years ago.

According to a study made by ‘Harris’ (a renowned leader in tactical communication), it has been proven that the emergence of SMS and email services showed that around 64% of the customer prefer dropping a text or email to the company rather than making a personal call. This is heavily consuming the positive impacts of an inbound customer service. 5 years ago customers used to make a call to the company but recently it changed with the emergence of social media services. Although inbound phone calls are rapidly decreasing but the great old phone is still alive holding its cane. Phone calls still dominate the 21st century customer service provider. Now, the question is whether the good old days of a phone call will still exist or will it vanish like just other aged technology.

Many call centre services are now installed with the facility of chats and responding to emails. However, according to a recent study made by ContactBabel, it is found that 80.4% of the call centres receive inbound customer service interaction on a daily basis. Phone calls are not dead yet. They still dominate the customer service podium. Although another study suggest that inbound calls will decline upto 9% in the next 12 to 18 months period. Numerous hypothesis are stated and suggested for the decreasing rate of phone calls. Out of the many reasons one universal reason is, the disgust feeling of talking to call centre agents.

A lot of people would prefer talking to a dog rather than interacting with a human being, young people specially. The generation Y is quite indifferent towards the rule and regulation set by the society. According to psychologist, the indifferent attitude is a form of rebel against the society. A survey by Desk.com found that 34% of the generation Y hates the idea of calling customer service centre of an organisation. Their observation means a great deal because if the statistics rate of phone call keeps on declining so rapidly then by the end of 2020 the percentage will rise upto 50% and 75% percentage by the end of 2030.

Massive decline in the rate of phone calls is not the climax. People hate to make calls but, fortunately making a phone call to an inbound customer service provider is the only effective tool to solve a solid issue. Emails or SMS or any other social media does not deliver the service that a live agent can deliver. When all your self-service mediums betrayed you the only option left is to seek help from another human form. Even though a massive amount of interaction to solve an issue starts with alternate channels but at the end of the day one has to escalate to an excellent inbound customer service for resolutions. Companies adaptive to versatile technological developments are providing both the channel. Definitely boosting high productivity of the company with double bonus.

No doubt that phone calls will never betray the human race. But companies and organisations must assure customers to provide extraordinary phone call services along with the multi-channel era. There are upside and downside of every industry. Organisations to outshines and establish a brand name should keenly watch their customers behavior, competitors and leading companies. Technological transformation are inevitable crossroads, the only way out is to hold its hand.