When you think of a call center, what do you picture? Most people probably imagine a traditional phone bank. Rows and rows of cubicles populated by diligent call center agents. While this model still exists for many businesses, new technology and software solutions have switched up the game.
These days, contact center software empowers small businesses and large enterprises alike with advanced tools, technology, and integrations.
So whether you’re looking for a contact center platform that can connect to your favorite CRM platform or you’re trying to find a software solution that can help you manage your inbound calls, here’s what you need to keep in mind.
1. CRM platforms empower call centers
Your customer support team handles disparate workflows throughout the day. When your call center representatives and supervisors have to juggle outbound calls, inbound calls, social media chats, and email inquiries, it can be harder to spot where an individual is in their customer journey.
That’s why many customer service departments prioritize call center solutions that facilitate CRM integrations out of the many software solutions for call centers.
CRM tools enable you to gain insight into your customer interactions and see where customers are within your sales and support pipelines. These software integrations also provide you with clearer performance metrics that should be accessible from any agent desktop.
2. Interactive voice response helps automate calls
Interactive voice response, or IVR, is a tool that many of the best call center software platforms offer. IVR serves several purposes. For starters, it can help connect callers to the right agent. Effective menu-based call routing tools make it easier to ensure that each caller speaks with the appropriate representative.
The same goes for live chat routing, though this is commonly easier to streamline via a web browser. Plus, you can develop a custom experience that can better speak to your brand’s existing customer satisfaction needs. Whether these tools are implemented to empower your sales team, support team, or account managers, custom experience is often critical.
Also, IVR makes it easier to collect customer data like account numbers, DOB information, and other contact details to verify an account or better prepare the customer service representative to provide effective phone support.
Since IVR makes it easier to adhere to best practices when providing phone support, you can apply similar concepts within your sales team. Call routing and automation tools make it that much easier to field incoming calls, gather customer data, and review analytics. Sites like BrightPattern.com can help you learn more about cloud contact center tools and resources.
3. Omnichannel contact center tools encourage a seamless customer experience
When working across diverse communication channels, it can be difficult to enforce consistently great customer experience standards.
So whether you’re talking to a customer on a mobile app, web chat platform, social messenger, or phone system, you want to use integrative customer service platforms that empower you to connect these disparate points of contact.
Since many customers prefer to interact with your brand across several channels before making a purchase or requesting further information, you can use omnichannel contact center tools to determine whether or not it’s a customer’s first time visiting your site and where else they’ve interacted with their brand.
Focusing on different communication channels and intelligent routing makes it simpler to meet the customer on their terms. In addition, by adopting your audience’s preferred channels, you can encourage more conversions and develop robust quality management protocols.
Whether you’re running a fledgling startup business or you’re leading a burgeoning retail empire, the right software solutions can empower any business’ call center and lead to a great customer experience. Now that you know about these tools, you can find ways to incorporate them into your success story.
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