Why Your Call Center Needs Next-Gen Media Servers in 2024

While it has been four years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, no one in the contact center industry will forget how their ‘normal’ was flipped on its head. Almost overnight, the industry experienced an estimated 300% spike in call volumes. While that was hopefully a once-in-a-100-year event, the role and value of contact centers to support SMEs, enterprises and governments has never been more in the spotlight. In fact, CFI Group found that 76% of consumers still prefer phone calls to reach customer support representatives. While contact centers maintain their prominence, customer expectations have also continued to rise. Customers now demand quick responses, personalized experiences, and seamless omnichannel interactions.

But today’s contact centers are struggling to meet this level of expectation due to the capabilities of their current infrastructure. Many contact centers are plagued by challenges such as:   

• Inefficient Call Routing Ineffective Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems lead to long wait times, which impact customer satisfaction.
• Lack of Omnichannel Support Customers now interact with businesses through various channels – calls, emails, social media, etc. Traditional contact centers often struggle to support these multiple channels effectively.
• Inability to Scale With fluctuating call volumes, contact centers need to scale their operations but traditional systems struggle to address peak time call traffic.
• Cloud Compatibility In the era of remote work, global workforces and international customers, the ability to deploy solutions in the cloud has become critical. However, many existing systems are not equipped for this.

So, what investments do contact centers need to prioritize in 2024 to transform their operations and deliver the high-quality experience that their customers expect?

A highly reliable media server must be at the center of all investments in 2024. This is because they are a key building block to overcome these challenges. Not only do they raise operational performance by increasing capacity and scalability, reducing agent workload, and streamlining call center operations, but next generation media servers also improve the customer experience from call initiation through to call completion. A media server is critical for today’s contact centers to:

• Seamlessly route the customer via IVR to self-service or to speak to an agent.
• Enable agents to interact with their callers via audio, video or sharing relevant visual content, like tutorials or product demos, with rich multi-media capabilities at their fingertips.
• Allow other agents or supervisors to join a call with multi-party conferencing features.
• Review and improve the customer experience with call recording and analytics capabilities.

When assessing your new investment in a media server, make sure it includes:

• WebRTC support: to enable browser-based real-time communication.
• Versatile media processing: to support a broad range of media types, including audio and video, real-time HD voice and video conferencing and team collaboration.
• Scalability: to reliably handle thousands of simultaneous sessions.
• Cloud-Ready: to deploy on-premises or in the cloud.
• Standards-Based Compatibility: to ensure broad compatibility with existing systems and future technologies.

However, only some media servers are built to meet eh expectations of today and the challenges of tomorrow. For example, Dialogic’s PowerMedia® XMS is trusted by 250 of the world’s largest global networks and more than 15,000 enterprise customers. To date, more than 25 million media ports have been deployed, supporting over 1 billion mobile subscribers worldwide. Dialogic’s PowerMedia XMS and Media Servers lead the industry because they are more than just a media server. They offer a comprehensive solution that facilitates efficient communications, bolsters scalability, ensures compatibility, while empowering your contact center to deliver unparalleled customer service.

This is just a quick overview of why a next generation media server needs to be on every call center’s priority list for 2024. To learn more about what other capabilities are critical to improve your call center performance, download ‘Dialing into the Future’ whitepaper.