
“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”
~ Elbert Hubbard
The biggest conundrum of human life is to invent new ways that can make our lives easier. Since the time the first telephone was invented, when the first bulb was lit, to the era of the internet, with every evolution, the business sector is discovering effective and superlative techniques to make the service deliverance smooth and more profitable.
When it comes to excelling in your sector, what’s your primo point-of-focus? Of course, it is customers. You want to locate, tap, and convert your target audience into loyal customers. The very first step to do so is by attending each business call without any fail. As a business owner in the 21st century, you simply cannot afford to miss a single call coming to you as each unnoticed business call may be a lost revenue earning opportunity that may fall in your competitor’s lap.
And no brand can let its potential profit keep sliding to its rivals. This is not the way your business can attain an apex level in the market. There has to be another way!
Incomes the phone answering services.
A few organizations have hence started hiring phone answering agents who will attend each business call with utmost professionalism and care. Other firms believe in handing over the phone answering task to expert vendors such as a call center in USA, India, UK, etc. Whatever the approach is, the gist is to ensure that your business misses not a single call, which in return, assures zero lost opportunity for your company.
The clash of technology and human workforce
For a business that is moderate in terms of revenue earning, may opt to handle the phone answering department in-house only. However, as the business starts growing, the phone answering task becomes more time & effort consuming, which leads to a downfall in other functions’ performance. A call center in USA, India, Australia, UK, etc comprehends this pain point of the business owners quite perfectly and hence offers first-string assistance to the organizations in phone answering task.
These specialized call center service providers render business owners like you with direct access to deft and experienced agents who will be serving your business 24/7. Business owners have been a fan of outsourcing strategy because of the benefits like cost-effectiveness, scalability, high efficiency, and superior brand image that it brings along. But, something changed. Within the last 2 decades, the technology sector is experiencing a vigorous surge in terms of innovation and application. New tech like AI and RPA have penetrated different business sectors and call center industry is also not spared.
A lot of companies are now availing RPA assistance for phone answering. In this, whenever a prospect or a customer calls in, a robot agent will pick up the call and communicate. The robocallers will have set questions and standard replies stored in them. The invasion of technology in the phone answering tasks has posed a massive threat to the requirement of human agents. Jobs will be lost. Is technology becoming smart enough to replace humans, if not in all, in most of the fields?
Certainly not. RPA is cool, it is efficient, and it saves cost and effort for the business, all true. But, is it able to provide the personalized touch to the interaction that human agents offer so easily? Don’t jump to any conclusion yet, let’s take a look at some of the bottlenecks in the automation of the phone answering function:
No human touch
Yes, you can teach a robot to reply to a set of generic questions and queries that people ask, but is it enough to pull in leads, to set an appointment with a prospect, and finally to convince a potential customer to make a purchase on a phone call? Well, to be honest, a machine can be available to assist your business 24*7 but it simply cannot intrigue or communicate with people effectively. The phone is still the customers’ most preferred channel to reach out to brands because of the sense of personalization that it offers. So, a call center in USA, India, UK, etc would be more effectively able to earn you the customers’ trust and loyalty than a machine with pre-set rules.
Hang-ups will soar
No doubt, robocallers will remarkably reduce the hold time by efficiently handling multiple calls at a time. But, another factor that should be considered is that prospects or customers when call, actually want to hear a human agent who can empathize and understand their issue. Imagine, what will a customer who wants clarity on some product order delay will converse with a robocaller? He won’t, he will simply hang up the call. This is quite obvious that the inclusion of RPA in phone answering will somehow raise the number of hung up calls.
Message replies and retrievals will be an issue
It is true that all the business messages will be stored by RPA-backed robots but if a customer has some emergency or a prospect wants to fix the appointment within hours or if a distributor who want clearance letter immediately, a delay can certainly happen.
Saving operational expense can be expensive
When you deploy robocallers to your phone answering division, you are actually saving a lot of money that would be used in hiring and training of agents. But have you ever thought from the customers’ point of view? Even though technology has entered multiple sectors, customers still want to interact with a human agent when they reach out to a business. And if the conversation happens with a robot, most of the customers end the call on discontentment and agitation, which make them leave the business. So, think again, are you really saving with the ultra-modern technology?
Final Words
Advanced technology is efficient and quite useful in many sectors. It provides businesses with a smoother operational journey and offers customers enhanced service experience. But a machine is still a machine. What a human agent can provide to a customer, a machine is only able to provide a fraction of it. Emotional intelligence is the biggest reason technologies are still a bit behind humans when it comes to delivering a stupendous customer experience. So, will you hire a call center in USA, UK, etc to offer that human touch-infused service or will rely on technology like RPA to pull in your audience? Be wise. Thanks!