How can Modern Contact Centre Software Drive Efficiency and Growth in your business?

January 23rd, 2018

You could have the best product and service in the world, but if your organisation is poor at post sale customer service and support, that is generally the lingering memory your customers will have about your business.

By the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.(Source: Walker)

Customer experience has a direct correlation with customer retention, profitability and brand perception, therefore, ensuring that the needs of your customers are met is and will continue to be of utmost importance.

In addition, with the proliferation of digital technology and social media, customer demands have increased significantly, if your business is not minimising the number of touch points and increasing the speed of issue resolution, your customers will turn to social media to vent their frustration and the ramifications could be even more damaging.

The good news is that SaaS Contact Centre and Call Centre Solutions have decreased in price, whilst features, functionality and flexibility of these solutions is constantly improving. The additional benefit of SaaS or cloud based software solutions is that there are minimal or negligible upfront CAPEX costs and pricing is based on number of licenses or a per agent price which is billed on a monthly basis (OPEX). In addition, there are no onsite hardware maintenance and support costs involved.

Companies focused on providing a superior experience across customer journeys realised a 10-15% increase in revenue and a 20% increase in customer satisfaction. (Source: McKinsey)

Contact Centre Solution Features:

• Call Back and Voice Mail Solutions – to reduce customer wait times and reduce call queues

If a user is stuck in a queue, the call back feature enables callers to enter the phone number on which they would like to be called back on, number is validated and played back to the caller to confirm the number. Lead/issue is date/time stamped, call-back occurs when an assigned agent is available.

Voicemail options are available to store all incoming voicemails in a queue, approved agents or administrators have access to voicemail queues which can be directed to the relevant agent for action.

• IVR (Interactive Voice Response) – smart call routing and diversions, and self administration of recorded messages

You can define your own call routing rules for the incoming phone number, e.g. IVR options, call waiting times, messages and rules for handling out of hours calls. Some Contact Centre solutions have the ability for a client to enter in their client ID into the IVR, when an agent picks up the call the relevant account information can be present on the agent’s screen, if the organisations CRM is integrated additional information on the customer can also be pulled up easily.

• Call Recording – for tracking and archiving of inbound and outbound calls

In many businesses recording of phone conversations is a legal and compliance requirement, the recordings can also be used for training and to improve the effectiveness and performance of agents.

Links to recordings can be saved in your CRM against the caller account records.

Call recordings can be searched for based on a number of parameters making it easier to recover information.

• Outbound Diallers – improve the efficiency of your agents by speeding up dial rates.

An automated outbound dialler can assist with improving contact rates, boosting productivity of your agents and reducing customer wait times.

If the dialler is integrated with your CRM, the agent will have access to your customers account information, which reduces double handling and asking the customer for unnecessary background information, the benefits are improved conversion rates, customer satisfaction and agent efficiency.

• Email and Web Chat – Provide your customers with Multiple Contact Options

Some contact centre solutions have an email and web chat tool integrated into the agent’s console, which allows for agents to access, search for and respond to tickets/requests submitted via email, using the same console that they use for voice, web chat and SMS.

Considering that email and web chat are widely used especially by the younger generation, being able to consolidate all your customer touchpoints into the one console is becoming increasingly important.

Mobile, web self-service and chat were found to be rapidly growing channels for customer support. “Over the last two years in Australia and New Zealand, the number of customers using a mobile phone for support calls more than doubled to 47 percent, the use of mobile apps has increased six times to 13 percent from two percent, and the number of customers using live chat has more than doubled to 26 percent.” (Source: Ovum)

• Online Self-service configuration portal – Makes it easy for Contact Centre Staff to administer contact centre functionality.

Setting up your call flow logic, queue information, files, recordings and documents is one of the most important tasks managed by a contact centre manager. Some legacy portals are very confusing, slow and limited and require a lot of expertise to administer.

Self-service portals offered by many hosted Contact Centre providers are user friendly and simple to use, making the job much easier for contact centre managers of all experience levels or even new starters.

• Pop Up Messages – to provide agents with customised real time information whilst on calls

You can warn and inform your agents using a custom message pop up in the event that higher than normal call volumes may be expected, either due to a sales campaign, network outage, emergency, incident or some other significant event. Custom messages or screen pop ups can be very useful to agents as it can give them access to breaking news, allowing them the opportunity to change welcome scripts and be able to address customers queries properly.

• Listening in on a call – non intrusive way to monitor live calls

Having access to a live call as a call centre manager can be very useful in a number of ways, for training purposes and quality assurance, or for interrupting calls and taking over if/when necessary.

• Skills based routing and Geography based routing with multiple queues–connect your customer with the most relevant agent, in the shortest amount of time.

You can significantly improve customer service and the utilisation of your staff across a number of locations who may have different skill sets and are available at different times. Eg staff could be categorised whether they provide L1, L2 or L3 support, you can automatically route calls to different teams based on their skillset, to ensure that calls are being taken by the most relevant person within your organisation and effectively utilising the time of your senior people.

• Engagement Score – Easy Tracking and Monitoring of NPS (Net Promoter Score)

Many organisations have established processes and in many cases KPI’s to achieve a desired NPS for their customer service. Contact Centre Solutions provide options around capturing customer feedback and their experience with interacting with the business or call centre, allowing the business to track NPS related metrics almost in real time.

• Integration – Contact Centre Solution integrates with your telephony systems, CRMs and other corporate software

There are a number of ways to receive or make a call via the contact centre software, using a softphone, desk phone or a mobile phone, therefore, ensuring that your contact centre solution integrates with your phone system is an important consideration, or if you are planning on upgrading your phone system at some point whether it be on-premise or hosted, that should impact on your buying decision.

• Analytics and Reporting – Customised Dashboards and ability to access and share Contact Centre Metrics in Real Time

Reporting and having access to metrics is critical to contact centre performance, customer satisfaction and sales. With most contact centre software solutions, you can create your own dashboards and reports to track any number of key metrics and statistics, including Dialler reporting, customer wait times, customer satisfaction, dropped calls, number of touchpoints required to close a ticket, etc. Reports can be created and shared between various stakeholders using a simple secure URL, meaning that the reports are highly accessible even on mobile devices.

76% of customers claimed to have stopped doing business with a brand following a bad customer service experience.

(Source: Ovum)

 

Summary