Nowadays, it is well known that customer service management is as important as the quality of the products and services provided by the brand. A HubSpot study showed that 93% of customers are more likely to buy products from brands that provide quality customer service. In addition, according to data from the 2020 BVA Customer Service Observatory, 74% of consumers are willing to spend more or show higher loyalty when providing a positive customer service experience. In order to provide high-quality customer service, the company must be equipped with a reliable and powerful contact center solution (or call center solution) to handle all incoming and outgoing contacts with potential customers or customers. The following are 10 basic characteristics of a good contact center.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

The idea behind IVR is simple: it allows incoming customers to choose among many options based on different types of requests. It’s the famous:

• To know your balance, press 1
• To speak with an agent, press 2
• etc

Interactive voice response is an important function to ensure 24/7 phone reception. It defines the reason for the call in order to guide your potential customers and customers to the best waiting queue and allows agents to personalize their answers. IVR also supports activity peak management and promotes self-service: simple requests can be handled by the customer themselves-such as checking their balance or paying bills-without agent assistance, allowing agents to dedicate their time to more complex requests.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)

Intelligent routing by skill routes inbound calls directly to the most qualified agent available. Whether based on the spoken language, expertise, or specific product, the call will be directed to the agent most capable of providing a clear and quick response. As a result, ACD greatly reduces the waiting time for each incoming call, and improves customer satisfaction and productivity.

Omnichannel strategy

The digitization of customer service, which will be greatly accelerated in 2020, now requires new customer service channels. Although customers still prefer phone calls and emails, they also contact brands through other communication channels such as text messages, web forms, chat, instant messaging, and social media. Therefore, your contact center solution must be omni-channel, and all customer service channels must be centralized in one interface. In this way, your agents will have a 360° view of customer history and interactions, and can unify communication across all channels.

CRM integration

In order to quickly identify customers and provide them with personalized answers, your call center solution must be easily integrated with your CRM (customer relationship management) or your industry tools (ticketing system, service desk, payment system). Quickly identifying customers or enriching your customer data in your IVR is one of many options for integrating CRM and contact center solutions to ensure the quality of your customer service.

Automatic pop-up files

The pop-up file (or customer file pop-up window) allows your team to take advantage of all necessary customer information before answering the call. This feature is achieved by integrating the call center solution with CRM, and it is possible to personalize each conversation with the customer and the response of the agent. It can record customer accounts, display customer history, and view previous interactions to provide personalized customer service.

In the cloud or on-premise

According to Gartner, between now and 2024, contact center spending on the cloud will account for 88% of the investment. The widespread adoption of remote work has greatly accelerated this cloud migration, and it is particularly suited to the company’s need for flexibility. If your team works across multiple sites, or if you need to adjust resources based on current events, you need a cloud contact center solution. On the other hand, if you need to integrate the call center with the old information system or carry out specific development, an on-premises solution will be more suitable.

Outbound call dialer

The outbound call dialer allows you to automatically make calls from a predetermined list of phone numbers-from CRM or directly loaded into the call center solution. It usually provides three dialing modes: preview, progressive and predictive. It is essential for teleprospecting, web lead callbacks, order follow-ups, bill reminders, meeting reminders, and satisfaction surveys. It allows you to choose a calling strategy to maximize the reach of your contacts. A powerful auto dialer is an important tool to increase agent productivity and successfully carry out activities.

Call recording

Call recording allows you to save phone conversations between your team and your customers or prospects for later listening. This feature is essential for agent training. While struggling to provide quality service, listening to their calls allows them to determine where to progress, possible obstacles, and reasons for customer dissatisfaction. In the case of a lawsuit with a client, the answering phone can also be used for legal purposes.

Real-time supervision

In order to supervise the overall activities of the call center, real-time supervision is an essential function. With a customizable dashboard available in real time, your supervisor can access all key indicators at a glance, enabling them to make quick decisions: agent online, customer waiting, agent available or resting, etc. Other monitoring techniques-careful listening, whispering, meetings, internal chat-allow agents to improve efficiency and performance.

Reporting

Average response time, AHT (Average Handeling Time), FCR (First Contact Resolution Rate), CRR (Customer Retention Rate) and Average Pickup Rate are one of many key performance indicators that represent customer quality. In order to optimize your KPIs, rich reports are an important asset for monitoring customer satisfaction and must be an important factor to consider when choosing a call center solution.

Which call center solution should you choose?

In order to optimize customer satisfaction and provide quality customer service, Contact Center Live provides an intuitive and flexible call center solution that can meet your needs. Our all-in-one cloud solution provides you with all the keys to providing perfect customer service on all interactive channels and increasing the impact of outbound activities.

Source: Vocalcom

The call center is the core of business operations and plays a vital role in customer service. Agents take action at every step of the customer journey: prospecting, telemarketing, customer service, and debt collection. What challenges do call center managers face? Regardless of the communication channel, provide a personalized customer experience while managing the volume of activities. Since flexibility and agility are essential in a call center environment, here are some key features for choosing the right call center software.

Optimize your inbound and outbound call management

Route your inbound calls intelligently

According to Gartner’s “Customer Channel Preference Research 2020” report, telephone is still the most widely used communication channel for contacting customer service. Your call center software must integrate intuitive interactive voice response (IVR), which can be modified in real time without IT support. In this way, you can adjust the welcome message according to the current situation, manage waiting queues and integrate 24/7 self-service options, for example, allowing customers to check accounts, pay bills or track deliveries. Incidents or call peaks. The call distribution system (or ACD, automatic call distribution) must ensure that inbound calls are intelligently routed to the most qualified agent available for each request type.

Automate your outbound call campaigns

In order to increase efficiency in appointment scheduling campaigns, web lead callbacks or telesales operations, your call center agent must be able to rely on an automatic dialer that provides preview, progressive or predictive dialing modes for you to choose from to suit your campaigns needs. In addition, the web callback feature will enable visitors to your website to receive instant callbacks from the agent to answer their questions and speed up the conversion rate.

Offer a unified customer experience on all channels

With the digitization of customer journeys and the increased use of online instant messaging, chat, and social media, customer service is also carried out through other communication channels. In order to adopt these new practices, the contact center must have an omni-channel contact center software solution, in order to improve the management of customer interactions on all channels within the unified platform. With a 360° view of all customer interactions, agents can provide personalized answers and provide a seamless customer experience across different communication channels.

A software solution that drives efficiency

Improve agent comfort

For your team, the use of powerful and user-friendly technical solutions is essential to meet the needs of customers. Intuitive interface, quick access to customer information, script assistance, real-time tracking of its performance indicators: the usability of call center software is crucial because it can help your agents become the best ambassadors of your brand.

Monitor your operations in real-time

To monitor the performance of business representatives and customer satisfaction, your call center software must provide real-time monitoring of key performance indicators (call pickup rate, abandonment rate, waiting time, etc.) in order to react quickly. In addition, the integrated reporting tool will provide detailed statistical information about your customer service center operations to identify areas for improvement.

Choose an open software solution that integrates with your CRM

Your call center software is part of an application ecosystem that allows you to manage all aspects of customer service. In order to quickly identify your customers and provide them with personalized answers, your call center software must easily integrate with your CRM and industry tools (such as ticketing systems, service desks, and payments). From customer identification in IVR to contextual customer card pop-up windows and rich customer data, customer knowledge is a key factor in customer service quality.

Integrate the latest innovations in automation and AI

Due to the health crisis, the ability to deploy chatbots and voice robots for customer service can be accelerated to cope with peak activity and provide 24/7 self-service for simple or recurring problems. It can provide quick answers to other customers based on their previous requirements. In order to provide a seamless omnichannel service, your bot must be integrated with your contact center platform-according to Forrester, a chatbot can be happy for 63% of customers, as long as they can talk to an agent when needed .

Cloud or on-premise software?

With the help of cloud call center software solutions, enterprises can benefit from turnkey solutions without having to invest in hardware, which will reduce the total investment cost. Flexibility, agility, scalability: Cloud is the preferred solution for rapid deployment across remote work or multiple sites, and new agents can be quickly added according to your needs. However, local contact center solutions may be more suitable in certain specific situations-integration with old information systems, specific development, or for companies with strong internal technical resources, which will increase the cost of local solutions in the long run From a standpoint, it is less than a SaaS solution. 

Source: Vocalcom