Ask most businesses what their main priorities are for running a contact centre, and their answers will typically revolve around efficiency and maintaining service levels. As the main front of house operation for many businesses, keeping call traffic flowing, availability high and response times low will always be a key focus in the contact centre.
After all, ask customers how they judge good service, waiting times and efficiency are always high on the list.
But in recent time, more and more businesses have started to take a look at their contact centre and asked themselves whether it can be developed from a functional service funnel into a key strategic asset. As service has become an increasingly critical point of difference in competitive markets, the ambition has moved from not just upholding an acceptable level of performance, but adding value by driving service improvements.
In short, businesses have started to take the view that there is a direct correlation between the service you offer through your contact centre and the bottom line. Happy customers mean returning customers. The more business your retain through high service levels, the happier the business is all round.
According to BroadSoft, delivering the kind of service in the contact centre that keeps customers coming back depends on three things – effective management of agent performance, analytics and effective, efficient collaboration between front-line agents and backroom staff.
There is no mystery to this. Having higher skilled agents with direct access to the answers customers want increases the number of queries which can be resolved successfully first time. Sophisticated analytics helps to assess customer needs quickly, helping agents to source answers or refer contact quickly, and to the right place first time.
These are the main reasons why BroadSoft has built predictive analytics and intelligent routing into its CC-One contact centre solution. Harnessing the power of Big Data software, CC-One is designed specifically with customer satisfaction rates in mind, providing a direct link between the contact centre and the bottom line.
In this review, we will assess exactly what CC-One has to offer and how it delivers on its promise to raise the bar on service levels. Please remember, the views contained in this review are those of the author only. UC Today is completely independent and does not endorse or promote and particular brands or products.
What Can It Do?
BroadSoft CC-One is a native cloud omni-channel contact centre solution available in three editions:
- Express – a voice-only solution for SMBs
- Business – a complete omni-channel solution for operations of all shapes and sizes
- Salesforce – runs CC-One as an embedded app within Salesforce sales and service clouds, with full integration of CRM data to create a more personalised, responsive customer service experience
- Hybrid Cloud – an agnostic solution to sit on top of existing on-premises systems, regardless of vendor
As an omni-channel solution, CC-One caters for customer interactions via voice, web, email and social media, combining all into a single centralised platform. However customers choose to contact a business, traffic is controlled and routed in a single traffic stream, so there is no penalty for response times for, say, making a phone call compared to web chat.
Outcomes from every point of contact through every channel are also centrally stored and integrated. This ensures accurate, up to date contextual data is always available to agents, informing them of contact history so they can pick up the thread of queries quickly and respond to customer needs individually.
BroadSoft bills CC-One as an analytics-driven contact centre solution, and the CC-One Analyzer app is central to that claim. Analyzer takes data from a multitude of points in the contact centre – all contact channels, ACD, IVR, integrated CRM platforms – and applies Big Data analytics techniques to achieve a number of outcomes:
- Providing full 360 degree visibility of the customer interaction journey, through all points of contact
- Applying statistical performance analytics to agent’s work to identify strengths and inform CPD
- Intelligent routing based on predictive analytics of customer requirements, using contact history to match customers to agents best qualified to help them
- Intelligent routing based on dynamic interactive analytics, assisting agents with information sources and referrals while conversations are in progress to achieve the best possible outcomes
- Creating real-time performance dashboards covering stats from all channels
Via integration with BroadSoft’s UC-One and Team-One suites, CC-One also allows for fast, efficient collaboration between contact agents and back office staff. So if an agent gets a query they need assistance with, aided by the intelligent routing capabilities, they can quickly identify the right person in the organisation to turn to.
As the whole BroadSoft environment runs in the Cloud, it doesn’t matter where that person is based – the agent can see their availability and get in touch with a single click. They might want to refer the whole call, start a conference or send an IM mid-conversation with the customer. In response, the back office team can use the collaboration tools to share a document, or even provide a demonstration by sharing their own screen.
What do we like?
BroadSoft CC-One offers a complete end-to-end contact centre solution. The integration with UC-One and Team-One ensures that the contact centre does not sit in its own isolated silo, instead making it part of a bigger business communications solution, and extending the reach of customer service across an entire organisation. The CC-One Analyser app is a powerful business intelligence tool, giving businesses the power to focus on service as a key strategic asset and drive performance.
Who is it for?
BroadSoft CC-One is a very flexible solution for businesses of all shapes and sizes. The Express edition provides a cost-effective voice-only platform for small businesses, handing them the power of advanced analytics, whilst the limitless scalability and mobile support behind the BroadSoft cloud means CC-One can make an effective solution for the largest global enterprises.
What is it compatible with?
CC-One is available in a Salesforce edition as an embedded app in the Salesforce cloud. It is also built according to BroadSoft’s bOpen cloud architecture, supporting interoperability and voice, data and application integration through a variety of APIs, SDKs and standards.
UC Today Opinion
No one needs to make the case for how crucial business intelligence is to driving performance. In every area, the better an understanding you have of how things are working, the more scope you have for identifying areas for improvement and potential growth opportunities.
With CC-One, BroadSoft applies these key business principles to the contact centre. A modern solution which makes full use of the flexibility and scalability of the Cloud, as well as the trend towards multi-channel customer interactions, CC-One’s main strength is the inclusion of powerful Big Data analytics tools.
These mean a business not only gains complete end-to-end oversight of customer contact experiences and service performance, they also assist with the providing faster, more efficient, better targeted service with dynamic and predictive techniques. The main outcome is that more customers get a better level of service, with the resolution they want, first time. And as any business knows, happy customers are more likely to come back.
Have you any experience with BroadSoft’s CC-One? How do you rate it as a modern omni-channel solution? What are your thoughts on the role of predictive analytics in the contact centre? If you have anything to share, please add a comment below, and don’t forget to share this article on social media to get others joining in the conversation.
