What is a Digital Call Center?

A digital call center is a customer service operation that provides support for its customers through digital channels such as email, chat, text (SMS), social media, and more. Support of these channels is usually in addition to traditional phone support.

Organizations typically transform their call centers into digital call centers in response to customer demand. Consumers, especially younger Millennials and Gen Z, often find digital channels more convenient and easier to use than phone support. In fact, the 2019 NICE Customer Experience (CX) Transformation Benchmark study found that chat customer satisfaction scores tied those of phone support. Emerging digital channels, like private social messaging, aren't far behind.

Technical implications for digital call centers

Transforming a phone-only customer service operation into a digital call center takes effort, talented staff, and the right technical tools. Not all call center software can support digital channels. Digital call centers need:

• Automatic contact distributors (ACDs) that can route digital interactions. Ideally, the ACD also has omnichannel capabilities, which means it has a universal queue that holistically organizes, prioritizes, and routes contacts from all channels.
• Interaction channels that provide the ability to support a multitude of digital channels. Channels should be simple to add or eliminate.
• Workforce management software that can forecast volume for all supported channels and schedule multi-skilled agents for maximum utilization. These capabilities are important for efficiently running a digital call center.
• Reporting tools that comprehensively report data from all channels. Supporting more channels adds complexity, making consolidated reporting extremely important.