The last five years has drastically transformed how we communicate and engage - both internally with team members, and externally with customers
Employees are interacting through a host of channels, from social media to SMS, live chat, and email – and some continue to use the phone. Plus, customers expect to connect with companies through the same solutions. To address this change, many companies have embraced unified communications, and the market is growing.
However, unified communications systems alone may not be enough to address the changing expectations and demands of the contact center. To enable and enhance hybrid and remote work, improve compliance and boost customer satisfaction, companies need an all-in-one solution.
Top Tips for Meeting Evolving Contact Center Requirements
Unified Communications platforms can be valuable and do meet the needs of many organizations, supporting collaboration among hybrid workers, and omnichannel communication. The trouble is, many companies are relying on multiple applications at once. When they add a contact center solution into the mix, they end up with a complex, expensive, and siloed environment.
The gaps between technology systems, and the complexity of this ecosystem has a significant impact on contact center results. In fact, 58% of contact center leaders say fragmentation in their communications strategy has a negative impact on customer satisfaction.
So, how can companies transform their operations and overcome evolving challenges?
1. Prepare Employees for Complex Customer Interactions
Customer interactions are becoming increasingly complex. Not only are consumers navigating experiences with companies across multiple disconnected channels, but they’re solving many simpler issues alone, using AI and self-service resources. Around 67% of customers say they prefer self-service over speaking to a contact center agent directly.
By the time customers reach your agents, they’ll be expecting fast, intuitive support, without the need to repeat themselves. This means companies need a true omnichannel contact center solution, that unifies context and data across every channel. Bridging CCaaS and UC solutions ensures you can prepare your employees for complex experiences, by giving them access to comprehensive data.
It ensures you can align information from previous discussions with relevant documents and resources, as well as sentiment and conversational insights. Additionally, connecting UC and CCaaS technologies ensures your team members can collaborate easily with subject matter experts and other team members on complicated customer queries.
2. Unify Analytics and Insights
Data is crucial to delivering not just better, more personalized customer experiences, but also ensuring your company can make the most of its available resources. When UC systems, contact centers, and other critical tools are disconnected in the workplace, collecting the right data is complex.
An all-in-one solution for reporting and analytics throughout both the contact center, and the wider business environment, paves the way for stronger decision making. For instance, can automatically track custom metrics, ranging from employee utilization insights, to customer sentiment, helping you to gather more complete, meaningful data.
With the ability to integrate both your UC and CCaaS analytics with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, , companies can use insights to deliver more personalized and engaging experiences to customers.
With integrations for WFM (Workforce Management) and ERP tools, companies can even use the insights they gain to determine how to allocate resources cost-effectively. Plus, an integrated solution for analytics and reporting paves the way for proactive customer service experiences. The more data you have, the more you can anticipate future customer needs, and trends.
3. Embrace AI and Automation
Artificial intelligence and automation are redefining how contact centers and companies operate on an incredible scale. However, the power of these solutions is often limited when teams are restricted to using different workflows and AI systems for different processes.