Switching and upgrading your contact centre software can be a headache. The potential disruption of the switch, not to mention the challenge of finding the right solution, is enough to make anyone want to put it on the back burner. However, you also know that legacy software is costing you in terms of customer satisfaction and efficiency.
Signs that you can’t afford to put it off any longer include:
- Your front-line contact centre staff are overwhelmed and struggling to keep up with demand.
- You don’t have real-time access to key metrics and data to support resource planning and performance evaluation.
- You’re managing multiple contact channels and you can’t bring them all into the same system.
- It’s a challenge to manage data security and compliance, because it’s not integrated within in your existing software.
If you recognise any of the above and you don’t know where to start, read on to find out the kinds of features you’ll need to consider.
With the right systems in place, your staff will be at their most effective.
Features of effective Contact Centre Solutions
Automated call queuing and routing
Smart automation will allow you to support more customers, more efficiently. Automated call queuing will usually include automated greetings for inbound phone calls, an auto attendant that gathers answers to simple questions from the caller and digital routing to ensure the caller is directed to the right person or department to deal with their query.
Call recording
At a minimum, call recording systems need to record all inbound and outbound calls, securely capture each recording, and securely store the data. Next generation systems also include automated support for compliance with payment card details (more on this under security and compliance below).
Remote access for staff
A cloud-based call centre solution (also called Contact Centre as a Service or CCaaS) will remove the stress of managing an on-premises system, while making it easy for your staff to log in and work from anywhere, any time (as long as they have an internet connection).
Integration with CRM system (Customer Relationship Management)
The latest contact centre solutions will either include a CRM solution or easily integrate with other systems, so all your customer data is managed seamlessly. This means support staff can easily access information about previous interactions, providing better service to the customer by reducing the amount of time spent resharing information from previous calls.
Reporting and real-time data analytics
Basic contact centre reporting on metrics like call volumes, abandonment rate, average handle time and average wait times is essential. However, next generation call centre services will also enable more sophisticated data analytics. For example, identifying keywords and conversational trends, identifying common pain points or sentiment analysis of calls.
Security and compliance
All data that passes through your contact centre must be held and processed in compliance with GDPR to ensure data privacy. This involves appropriate data encryption, both during data transfer and data storage, as well as ensuring information like credit card details aren’t saved in call recordings. Next generation contact centre solutions have inbuilt compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), taking care of this compliance challenge for you.
Business continuity and disaster recovery
Cloud-based call and contact centre solutions now include disaster recovery and business continuity planning as part of the service. At Heliocentrix, we will also discuss this with you during our requirements gathering phase to ensure you will have the right plans in place, should the unexpected happen.
Smart Artificial Intelligence
Advances in AI bring the potential to reduce call waiting times and improve your customer experience with predictive analytics and increased automation. The latest contact centre solutions use inbuilt AI to:
- predict and prepare for peak contact times,
- identify common key words or topics with speech analytics,
- use keywords to provide staff with common answers to customer problems,
- evaluate how individual calls went using sentiment analysis, and
- monitor call quality and suggest training for staff.
Call Centre Solutions for your business
Our friendly team stays in touch with the latest trends in business IT and VoIP systems and we understand that each business needs a system to meet its needs, rather than rely on off-the-shelf solutions.
Contact Heliocentrix to discuss how we can help you upgrade your call centre system without disrupting day to day operations.