Modern contact centres rely on sophisticated technology to operate at their full potential. Using the right mix of technology to support live agents improves productivity, enhances the customer service experience, provides opportunities to coach and retain talented staff, and ultimately boosts customer loyalty and revenue.
There are many types of technology available to businesses looking to optimise their contact centres. Increasingly, companies are adopting a cloud-based model for their contact centre, harnessing cloud technology to remain agile and flexible in a competitive market. Cloud based contact centres have the advantage of allowing for greater scalability to meet changes in demand, better business continuity through built-in safeguards, and improved efficiency.
Other advanced technology solutions include screen recording software, which allows users to record desktop activity; live chat software, which allows businesses to engage with visitors to their website via messaging in real time; interactive voice response or IVR, which allows computers and humans to interact with one another via voice and keypad inputs; and co-browsing technology, which enables agents to efficiently diagnose a customer’s problem and provide a tailored, step-by-step solution through remote collaboration and communication.
How To Choose The Right Technology
While there are multitudes of technological solutions on the market, it is important that businesses make an informed decision about the right technology for their contact centre. When choosing to invest in new technology or software, a company should begin by involving the right people to make the decision. Gaining insights from multiple sections of the business and forming a cross-functional team of decision-makers ensures that the chosen technology will work for every department in the organisation, not just a select few. Existing contact centre staff and representatives from teams such as marketing, sales, HR, IT and finance should all be consulted.
As well as the company’s immediate requirements, long term goals should be considered when choosing new technology. It is important that the chosen solution can grow with the organisation. It is equally vital that the ultimate objective of customer service is prioritised and all technologies are considered in this frame.
Some key factors to consider when choosing new technology for a company’s contact centre include customisations, integrations and compatibility, and customer support. Customers prefer a personalised and individual experience, so being able to tailor engagement tools and add advanced features is vital. Integration with a company’s existing CRM and other business applications makes the process of using new technology much smoother and ensures an easy transition for both employees and customers. And software providers should provide comprehensive customer support, with extensive training and ongoing assistance when required.
Boosting Productivity And Efficiency
Using advanced and innovative technology can improve the productivity of a business contact centre, allowing staff to solve problems more quickly and decreasing waiting times for customers.
When choosing new technology solutions, decision-makers should consider how the new software will optimise live customer service agents. Technology such as screen recording can save time for agents, allowing them to troubleshoot issues and demonstrate products to customers without the need for written instruction.
Similarly, software that keeps records of customer interactions saves agents time by giving them all the required information upfront, preventing the need to ask customers repetitive questions.
Additionally, technology can identify areas for process improvement, allowing a business to streamline their operations and improve productivity in the long term. It is important to listen to current contact centre staff members and ask for feedback on new solutions. If a new program is making their job more complicated or difficult, it will not achieve the company’s goals.
Improving Customer Experience
It is vital for any businesses to offer a fast, friendly and effective customer service experience. Offering a premium service increases customer retention, new business acquisition, and profitability.
Innovative technology can help improve excellent customer service through making the customer service experience smooth, quick, and eliminating frustrations. This can be achieved through technologies that offer omnichannel engagement, allowing customers to contact the business through their preferred method such as phone, email and live chat.
AI can assist in routing customers to the correct agent to solve specific problems, preventing double-handling and a lengthy customer engagement. Software such as screen sharing and co-browsing can be used to quickly diagnose and solve problems.
Finally, technology that collects data provides better analytics for management to consistently improve the customer experience.
Assisting Live Agents
Contact centre technology can assist customer service agents to do their jobs more quickly and efficiently. It also increases employee satisfaction, freeing agents from repetitive and menial tasks and allowing them to focus on more challenging problems.
Cloud-based technology can assist in increasing agent flexibility and work-life balance, giving them options to work from home and even to choose their own hours. These benefits ultimately lead to higher employee retention, which assists the business by allowing them to grow talent and keep experienced and talented agents.
It is important that businesses choose the right technology to assist live agents, finding the right balance between automating areas of their job to boost productivity and efficiency, and ensuring that employees are still engaged and mentally stimulated.