The way you meet your customers can have a big impact on your business. To do so, your contact center solution needs to be competent and powerful enough to handle incoming cases in an efficient and seamless way. Here are five functions the best contact center solution needs to have.
There are several different types of contact center solutions to help you handle customers and cases and create the best possible customer experience. Most service providers have started their path in a specific niche and then developed their functions to include most of the common denominators characterised by a contact center solution.
The best contact center solution for your company
The difference between various solutions isn’t only based on the origin, but above all, what the user can do and what technical limitations exist. Naturally, different solutions specialise in different things, meaning you need a solid understanding of your company’s needs before choosing a supplier. As a step along the way, we’ve summarised five essential features that every contact center solution should have.
1. Internal management and configuration
Perhaps the primary thing for many companies today is managing their solution independently. The key to a self-running, efficient contact center is that administrators (or employees) should be able to go in and configure users themselves, change voice responses, open new channels, build queues, change the location of phone numbers or scale down if necessary. Being able to handle the basic settings on your own reduces the need for external help and, in the long run, internal administration.
2. Statistics
A contact center solution is not doing its job if it cannot report relevant stats that provide clear insights. You want to see how many incoming cases you have every week to how quickly your customers get the correct answer from the chatbot. The best contact center solutions must be able to collect data about everything from which information can be obtained.
Managing and obtaining in-depth statistics on what is happening in the various channels makes it easier for you to make operational decisions that help your customers. Do 80% of all people who call customer service have invoice questions? If yes, then you don’t have to appoint more people to answer the phone but fix the ambiguity in the invoices. A simple but very descriptive example!
Read more: How to use your company's PBX statistics in the best way possible
3. Multi-routing
With multiple channels in your contact center solution, it can quickly become unmanageable and hard to keep track of where a case comes in and then follow it to its destination. If you insist on doing it manually, that is! When combining chat, social media, phone, and email, your system must also seamlessly manage the routing between these.
Regarding telephony, IVR or voicemail is a classic and necessary aspect of routing – but far from all that is required today. Nowadays, different cloud-based solutions are often the primary way into a company. That means your platform needs to have a function that allows the right person to take care of the suitable case, regardless of whether it comes via email or Facebook. The aim is precisely the same: for the customer to get help as quickly as possible!
4. Possibilities for integrations
Your contact center solution needs data and information from many other places to be able to fulfil its purpose. Therefore, the solution must have great integration possibilities with other tools and systems you use, such as CRM or a business system.
When the customer calls or emails the company, it should be easy to see who the person is, what issues they’ve had before, what services or products they’ve been interested in, how often the person has been in contact with the company, and with whom in customer service.
Continue reading: How to integrate IP telephony, CRM, and customer service
5. Automation
In addition to essential integrations with other systems and data sources, another function will become increasingly important for companies in the future – automation. A contact center solution is a tool to quickly understand the customer’s problems and what they need help with. With extensive customer data, it’s possible to form your own type of intelligence in the solution, which means that you already know what the customer wants, even before they present a case.
That means you can transfer a call to the right person even before the customer is connected or initiate an automated message when someone calls for the third time that day, among other things.
Chatbots or live chat are perhaps the best examples of automation that helps a customer even before personal contact occurs. Based on history, you can automate certain functions linked to various customer reactions, which results in more efficient operations and better treatment. It’s all about taking care of the customer the right way!
Continue reading about how a customer-friendly contact center solution can make your business more efficient and improve your service.
