Customer communications are crucial for any business to thrive and grow. It enables brands to connect with the leads and customers to talk with a representative of the brand for any query or grievance. By providing timely prompts and immediate issue resolution, your customers feel valued and this positively affects the customer experience and their outlook towards the brand.
With the advancements ie technologies, different tools are available for effective customer communications such as messenger apps, chatbots, emails, and social media platforms. However, each has its benefits and shortcomings that render it unworthy to be termed as the complete solution of business client communication. For a business to remain engaging, and efficient contact center software is irreplaceable.
Why does a business require contact center solutions?
Irrespective of the size of a business, the call center agents are the only point of contact where the communication is direct and happening in real-time. In midst of managing customer interaction using multiple channels such as email, calling, and social media, certain calls, and messages may get dropped or sidetracked in the process of reaching out. A call center software integrates all of the methods of communicating with customers at a single platform. When paired with a CMS or a KMS, the agents can track individual conversations and provide them with the most relevant information. An efficient customer care solution can be applied in all the phases of customer interactions:
1) Marketing
2) Sales
3) Customer or technical service
If you need to know what is a
Type of Contact center solutions
Call Center Software is a collection of tools used by service and help teams. These various solutions include:
● IVR
● Outbound Call Center Solutions
● Inbound Call Center Solutions
● Virtual Call Centers
IVR
Interactive Voice Response is an automated voice system that gathers information from callers using a sequence of key-aiding responses. Based on inputs from the callers, they are routed to the appropriate agent.
Outbound Call Center Software
A centralized arrangement that can handle large volumes of inquiries by phone. The agents make outgoing calls to prospective or existing customers.
Inbound Call Center Software
This type of arrangement is capable of receiving large volumes of incoming calls from existing customers for reasons such as product or service support, or administration.
Virtual Call Center Software
A location-independent arrangement where the agents are not located at one specific physical location. The call center is managed by agents distributed across a number of different geographic locations or working remotely. The benefit of a virtual call center is that you don’t need a dedicated IT team to manage software and hardware. 3rd service providers like Vindaloo Softtech are responsible for providing all the support while the agents only need to log in and get to work conveniently.
Features of Contact Center Softwares that can Empower your business
In addition to handling the call traffic, an efficient contact center solution needs to have certain features in-built to avoid having to juggle between different tools to provide a flawless customer experience. Some of the features you need to ensure that your call center tool should provide:
1) Omnichannel Support
As mentioned earlier, channels for customer communications have become more than a simple phone call. Instead of having your agents consistently checking other channels, the omnichannel capability allows customer queries to be pulled from multiple channels like social media, phone calls, messaging, live chat, email, and business SMS, and organize them in a single window. This allows your agents to deliver faster and more effective customer support.
2) Built-in Automation capabilities
When running a call center operations of your business, there will be multiple things that are repetitive and can be managed by automation. This frees up the agents to focus on other pressing matters, while the customers remain engaged. Automation in the contact center can be used to handle notifications, reminders, and goal tracking. One use case for automation would be your agent calls a customer. They request to be called on a later date. The agent places a reminder and at the allocated time, the automation sends a reminder to the agent while automatically connecting with the client.
3) Workflow management
An effective call center is not the one where every agent is busy on a call but the one where workflow is managed in a methodical way that allows efficient work distribution. In the event of the absence of one agent, the software should be robust enough to allow teams to modify schedules on their own, manage timelines, and trade shifts between agents.
4) Intelligent call routing
Let’s assume you have different teams based on the areas of expertise. When a customer calls, the software would route them to the right agent after understanding the requirement through inputs from IVR. Paired with the omnichannel approach, the software can perform intelligent call routing depending on the medium used. This kind of routing will allow businesses to have a deeper and more contextual conversation with the clients. Using intelligent call routing, the software can route a call based on the category of the product, service, or location of the customer.
5) Real-time analytics
Everything deserves feedback for positive growth. Unless the results of your agents’ efforts aren’t measured, you may not understand the areas where you lack and where your team shine. Real-time analytics, in the contact center software, can generate customized reports that track call volume, customer satisfaction ratings, and the latest trends. Organizations using call analytics can reduce the average call handling time by 40% (Source: McKinsey). Having real-time analytics allows the manages to set Goal Tracking And Performance Reporting for their subordinates.
6) Mutliple tool integrations
As mentioned earlier, pairing your contact center software with a CMS or KMS allows the agent to access a customer’s history as their conversations across all communication channels are integrated into a single thread. Similarly, the software should support 3rd party integrations to allow seamless data exchange between social media platforms, helpdesk platforms, and marketing tools.
7) Auto call recording
To adhere to business policies, conducting internal quality checks, and training purposes, the calls should be recorded. When enabled manually, there are chances of the agent failing to press record and lost recording. With the auto-call recording feature, all the calls are recorded automatically as both sides are connected. This allows efficient employee monitoring and peace of mind against missed opportunities.
8) Voice Transcription
Another valuable feature that should be in your contact center software is the ability for voice transcription. This allows agents to capture the entire conversation in textual form, which can be referred to later to catch any missing details.
9) Voicemail
Nobody likes to be on hold to the point that the hold music becomes an irritation. When all your agents are busy at peak hours, a voicemail can become a savior. The client can record their message and the agent can get in touch when they become free. Pairing it with automation allows the agents to be sent reminders.
10) Scalability
Whether you have a team of a handful of agents or working with an enterprise-level team, your control center software needs to accommodate the needs and requirements of your team irrespective of scale. Choose software that permits you to add agents, adapt to fluctuating call volumes, and modify the different features.
Wrapping Up
For a small business, investing in contact center software may seem daunting owing to running costs. However, the benefits it brings to your business in terms of deep and contextual customer conversations and developing a competitive edge in the market. Hope we managed to have you see the advantages of having good contact center software. If you looking for a custom contact center, talk to the experts.
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