The Ultimate Guide to make the most of it
Contact centers are vital to any business that strives to deliver exceptional customer service. Today's contact centers are far more than telephone banks; they're centers for multi-channel communication.
Business leaders are increasingly turning to VoIP technology for their contact centers. VoIP communication systems offer robust tools, integrations, and analytics, empowering business leaders to maximize contact center productivity, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction.
A contact center plays a vital role in managing customer interactions. The modern contact center incorporates communication not only through the telephone, but also through additional channels like email, chat, social media, text, and messaging apps.
Contact centers can do much more than simply resolve customer inquiries. They can also help monitor customer engagements and track key performance data. The latest contact center technology helps make this data accessible throughout the organization.
Contact centers have become an integral part of so many businesses because they offer multiple advantages:
Contact centers were once the domain of telemarketing firms and huge national companies. But today they’re often an essential part of the customer experience for businesses in every industry.
When people think of organizations that need contact centers, they tend to think of two factors:
Regardless of your company’s product or interaction volume, the bottom line is that customer expectations have rapidly evolved in the past decade. Customers are no longer satisfied with 9-to-5 customer support via telephone calls. They look for 24/7 support through their own preferred communication methods, which might include text or social media messaging; web chat; email; or other channels.
Organizations across all industries have implemented contact centers to address these changing customer needs. Even small to medium businesses (SMBs) that wish to gain competitive advantage have embraced contact center functionality.
The following factors are good indicators that your business would benefit from a contact center:
VoIP stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol.” It refers to the process of making phone calls over the Internet, rather than a traditional landline or a mobile network.
VoIP systems work by taking analog voice signals and translating them into digital signals (known as packets), then finally sending them as data over a broadband line. If you are calling a regular phone number, the signal is converted to a regular telephone signal before it reaches the destination.
This process occurs almost instantly which is why VoIP sound quality is often even better than regular phone calls. VoIP can allow you to make a call directly from your laptop, tablet, regular smartphone (using an app), and even VoIP-compatible office phone sets.
In addition, wireless "hot spots'' in locations such as airports, parks, and cafes allow you to connect to the Internet and may enable you to use VoIP service wirelessly. VoIP uses modern technology by taking a standard internet connection and allows users to make phone calls cheaper (or even free depending on setup or distance).
Most VoIP systems are configured to include a SIP server (maintained by your VoIP provider) and desk phones, which might be traditional telephones or computer-based softphones. VoIP data is usually stored securely in the cloud, and the entire system is managed through an online dashboard.
Successfully running a contact center isn’t easy, and your communication system is critical to that success. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology offers many advantages over traditional communication systems:
If you’re considering VoIP for your contact center, be sure you get these must-have features.
Sometimes also called a virtual assistant, an auto attendant is a voice menu system that routes callers to the correct agent or extension without the intervention of a human receptionist.
Auto attendants can improve customer satisfaction because they optimize call handling. Customers are more likely to get routed to the right person from the beginning, with reduced risk of dropped calls. They also improve employee productivity because employees only receive calls that they’re qualified to handle, and they don’t spend time manually answering and transferring calls.
Sometimes contact center agents need a little extra support, especially if they’re new to the job or are dealing with customer service challenge. Call monitoring allows supervisors to monitor calls and intercede if needed. Whisper technology allows managers to guide the contact center agent on what to say, without the customer’s knowledge, or to intercede in the conversation.
Call monitoring is instrumental in employee training. It can also contribute to overall better agent performance for multiple reasons:
Automatic call distribution (ACD) is a system that automatically receives inbound calls and distributes them to contact center agents. Implemented well, an ACD can improve customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
The ACD collects information, such as location and language, based on caller ID. It also uses the customer’s response to the interactive voice response (IVR) to determine the caller’s needs. Using this information, the ACD will queue callers based on a customized set of factors that usually include customer status, query, and wait time. The call is then routed based on your preferred method. For instance, calls might be answered on a first-come, first-served basis, or based on agent specialization.
An interactive voice response (IVR) works in tandem with the ACD. This technology allows customers to select an option that best describes their needs, either by pressing a button on their phones or by voice command. IVR systems can handle basic requests such as paying bills, finding out account information, routing to the correct department, or finding hours and locations.
These IVR menus allow customers to do some of the work independently and will leave more call center agents free to handle more complex queries or requests. The most effective IVR menus include no more than five options, and they always allow people to speak directly to an agent.
Your contact center is an incredible mine for customer-service data and insights--but only if you’re tracking the action. Integrating your VoIP system with your CRM and other apps (such as Microsoft Teams) allows you to maximize the value of this data across your organization.
Real-time call data can help your customer service agents to close more deals. A CRM integration makes this data available immediately, without agents having to manually enter notes about each conversation. Meanwhile, your sales and marketing team can use the insights gained from the contact center to better understand customer behavior, which can help to refine buyer personas and marketing strategies.
A contact center represents a considerable investment in customer service. How do you know if you’re getting any ROI? With a traditional phone system, it’s often difficult to track individual agents’ or departmental performance. VoIP systems offer integrated analytics and reporting tools, accessible in real time through your VoIP service platform.
Your VoIP system will provide a comprehensive, real-time view of performance for the entire contact center. Basic analytics like call wait times and time to resolve a call can be used to evaluate progress toward KPIs like customer satisfaction (CSAT), customer retention, and a customer effort score.
Consumer expectations and preferences are changing. And consumers are also employees. Employees are increasingly using their mobile devices for business functions. Mobile apps make it even easier to take VoIP services and tools anywhere. Call center agents might use mobile apps to handle customer interactions, while managers could use them to track employees’ performance and share insights on the go.
More sophisticated VoIP apps include key features such as video conferencing, group chat, and SMS/MMS. These are particularly beneficial for remote employees or those who frequently travel.
A VoIP system allows call parking, where you put a caller on hold in the cloud. A parked call can then be answered by anyone in the organization by dialing the park extension number. Call parking is especially useful in contact centers because calls can easily be answered by the selected agent or supervisor.
VoIP phone systems include software for recording calls, an indispensable feature for every contact center. Call recordings are useful for training both contact center agents and the sales team. Furthermore, recordings offer valuable information for quality control or legal purposes. Other advantages of call recording include the following:
The latest must-have VoIP feature is call transcription. While a recording is often helpful for training and quality control, it’s not easily analyzed or searched. Call transcription allows your company to treat every call as part of a huge data set that can be analyzed to glean all kinds of insights.
And thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), call transcriptions have even more power. Sentiment analysis is the process of mining customer data (in this case call transcripts) to determine emotions and attitudes. On an individual basis, this means that callers who appear angry can be routed to agents who are adept at handling difficult situations. On a larger scale, the results of sentiment analysis can be used to provide a holistic view of customers’ feelings, which is valuable for sales, marketing, and even product development.
Over the past year especially, trends in contact centers and communications have adapted to the world around us. The COVID-19 pandemic caused many organizations to reassess their operations; emphasize remote work; and higher expectations for customer service and for employees. These trends will continue to impact contact center operations in the coming years.
The cloud eliminates physical hardware and increases reliability, functionality, and flexibility. For example, companies that were already using the cloud in their daily operations had a seamless transition when the pandemic caused traditional office jobs to move to remote locations. Team members are able to work from wherever and whenever they need to.
Companies that made the switch during 2020 have already seen the benefits of the cloud: improved business agility and continuity; increased security, enhanced productivity, and better agent experiences. The cloud also enables users to personalize their experience. Customers can receive on-demand, 24/7 support and can take advantage of trendy tools such as Cloud VOIP systems, live chat software, video consultation, asynchronous messaging, and SMS service lines.
Automated and semi-automated communication tools are smarter than ever. Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven effective for performing tedious, repetitive tasks with greater speed and accuracy than humans. AI is finding its way into the contact center for a wide variety of applications across communication channels:
The best VoIP systems already provide contact centers with robust tracking and analytics capabilities. Many of these tools have been overlooked in the past, but the rapid move to remote work meant that business leaders needed more real-time visibility and transparency than ever before. After all, ensuring excellent customer service, employee engagement, and productivity can be much more difficult in a remote environment.
It’s no longer enough to rely on basic metrics like average call time in the isolation of the contact center. Cutting-edge business leaders are leaning into advanced analytics to define KPIs and track progress toward those performance goals. With the right analytics tools, business leaders can uncover performance patterns and trends that inform real-time decisions based on high-quality data. The result? Improved agent performance, operational efficiency, and collaboration, not to mention better alignment between the contact center and the organization’s overall business goals.
Social media is already a huge part of many people’s daily lives. It is becoming even more popular as a way for businesses to connect with their customers. Offering support through social media is increasingly important. Social media platforms are more than just consumers talking about an organization, but it is a means of talking to the organization.
Some companies have even started to make conversations between customers and the organization public. Thus, potential customers can see how the brand solved a problem. As a result, it has been easy to demonstrate brand intelligence and care when resolving customer issues. This implementation should be a part of a larger plan of making communications easier and more convenient. People interact with each other on social media, so it makes sense that it would be beneficial to create positive business relationships and connections.
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