Brazilian Call Centers in Transition

Readers of our blogs will have noted how, over the years, we have chronicled the move from outbound calling to other forms of customer engagement, for example see Push vs Pull in June of this year.  One reason for this has been call centers, out of control, bombarding consumers with spam and nuisance calls. This phenomenon is not just confined to developed countries, but is global.  This month we turn the spotlight on Brazil.

According to a recent study there, each Brazilian receives, on average, 37.5 “spam” phone calls per month.  This is the highest among Latin American countries and grew 81% over last year.

Most of these calls come from robots or low-cost automated systems playing recorded messages to identify and keep the customer on the line.  They are usually part of a strategy aimed at keeping call center agents busy at all times.  Excess calls are simply terminated, even if they have been answered by a customer.

Ultimately, as has happened in countries such as the UK and the US, these practices have extremely negative effects on customer behaviour and hence agent productivity.  Not surprisingly, services to enable black listing of callers are growing exponentially in Brazil.  All this is leading to an exhausted market, obliging companies to rethink how they communicate with their customers.

To try and salvage the situation, demand for innovative communication channels allied with strategies to improve the customer experience are now in strong demand in Brazil.  The digital era means true multimedia and multisession solutions, allowing the customer to take charge of the dialogue with a contact center in the way we described in our Push vs Pull blog.

So the main way ahead for great customer service in Brazil is now being driven by customers deciding what media they want and in their time.  In this “new market” contact centers need to offer a joined up media experience allowing customers to communicate in the way that best suits them, for example chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Telegram, WeChat, as well as voice and video.  Innovative companies in Brazil are also striving to return to good practices in outbound dialing by adopting compliant AI dialing techniques and Sytel is at the forefront of this move.

Brazil fell off the cliff with bad outbound practices and are now as focused as any country in the world in recovering from this, and showing how a great CX experience can be delivered.  We will update you in a future blog!