A HUMAN BEING IS STILL IRREPLACEABLE ON THE CUSTOMER SERVICE LINES

The first year of the contact centre conference called Slovak Contact Center Forum was a success. The conference exceeded the expectations of us co-organizers and we believe it also met the expectations of 128 registered participants and 10 speakers :).

The successful contact centre conference is run in the Czech Republic under the auspices of the Association of Direct Marketing, E-commerce and Mail Order (ADMEZ). Thanks to the cooperation with CreditCall, it was possible to enjoy it in Slovakia for the first time.

“We are very pleased that we could bring the first edition of this successful conference to Slovakia. We discussed with our partners topics that have been resonating in this market for a long time, such as the link between technology and human potential. This is a long-term issue that we believe will bring us more effective communication and further improvement of the services we offer in the future.”

CreditCall was the first Slovak member of the Czech association ADMEZ. It has been organising conferences focused on developments and trends in contact centres for more than twenty years. Tomáš Hájek, Executive Director of ADMEZ, explains: “Our Slovak colleagues have been coming to the Czech conference regularly in recent years. That’s why we decided to bring it directly to their capital city. It gives a great basis for similar conferences and also fruitful cooperation to continue to develop.” One of the underlying themes is the replacement of operators by artificial intelligence: “Of course, technology helps save labour costs because it can perform certain functions. But the question is whether the operator can be completely replaced by teaching something to a machine. They tend to work on simpler activities, the more complicated ones are already handled by humans.”

What is the outcome of the conference?

• We agreed that humans are and will be part of call centres in the future.
• We agreed that AI is indeed artificial, but not intelligence :).
• We have proven that we can organise a great event together.
• We have confirmed that we have a smart team, great colleagues and hostess operators.

The success of this conference is proven by the numbers of participants, which exceeded all expectations of the organizers. “The turnout at the conference exceeded all our expectations, with almost 130 participants here today. So we evaluate the first year very positively. We are glad that we managed to hold such an event in Slovakia and we would like to repeat it next year,” evaluates Juraj Balogh.

Tomáš Hájek sees the contribution of this conference mainly in the interactions between people: “After 20 years in this job, I perceive that the primary role of this conference, besides interesting lectures, is that people meet here and exchange information and news. Partnerships and collaborations are formed between contact centres and supplier companies, which later determine the market development. We are therefore keen to continue these collaborations,” He concludes.

After more than twenty years of the successful Czech “Call Center” conference, the ADMEZ association organized a sister event in Bratislava called the Slovak Contact Center Forum. It brought together the leaders of Slovak contact centres to assess the present and future of the industry. The theme of the conference was “The Voice of the Customer in the Digital Era”.

During the thematic blocks we had the opportunity to listen to our speakers. Iveta Malicka from the General Health Insurance Company, Tomáš Gribaničč from Slovak Telekom, Natasa Mendelova from Concentrix, Katarína Kmet’ová from Konecta, Lukáš Vrábel from Alza, Lukas Piperek and Dominika Ševčíková from the Office for Regulation of Electronic Communications and Postal Services came to present various topics and news related to the field of call centres. For example, the transformation of customer lines using artificial intelligence, wellbeing, as well as unsolicited communications in the context of the amendment to the Electronic Communications Act were discussed.