Today customers want to be able to reach companies quickly and have their problems solved right away, on whichever channel they most prefer – whether that is chat, voice or email.
Contact centres allow this and play a vital role in how businesses handle inbound and outbound comms.
So what makes a successful contact centre in 2023? Here are 5 suggestions from our team.
Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS)
In the past contact centres have been thought of as expensive to run, and complex which can have a negative impact on customer experience.
Enter Contact Centre as a Service. CCaaS solutions give businesses the ability to run a virtual contact centre where everything is completely cloud based – it doesn’t matter where your teams are working.
All the tools your agents might need are in one piece of software. This includes call monitoring and recording, video meetings, instant messaging and more. These platforms also have built in automation features to take care of repetitive tasks like updating databases, this means more time can be spent looking after customers.
CCaaS solutions are also scalable – you only pay for the features you need and can easily add more agents to the system as your contact centre grows. Plus, as consumers continue to embrace new channels for communication, the CCaaS space will ensure you can keep up with customer demands.
Omnichannel is the way to go
Cloud-based contact centre solutions support omnichannel experiences, this means that your agents can meet customers wherever they are most comfortable – phone, email, video chat, WhatsApp or Facebook messaging.
Agents can pick up and respond to questions or requests coming from various channels, your customers will get faster responses and in a way that’s most convenient for them.
This not only saves time and resources but provides valuable insight into customer data to improve your overall customer experience.
Today most people are connected on some kind of social media – and this is the place where customers want to engage in conversation. Through an omnichannel service, you can provide a quicker and better experience – customers aren’t always able to wait in a queue to speak to an agent and want an instant response.
Intelligent reporting
Your contact centre doesn’t only need to support an omnichannel environment, but also should be intelligent, providing the necessary information and reporting features.
Intelligent routing for both voice and email connects your customer interactions to the agent they last spoke to, or the best one based on skills – not only solving issues more quickly, but also matching your agents to the customer they can help the most.
To have all the information in order for your contact centre to be successful, it should easily integrate with you CRM and provide advanced reporting features. Especially for SMEs, reporting is always a key concern.
Artificial Intelligence
While many businesses are moving to cloud-based contact centres, many are not yet taking advantage of AI. AI can go a long way in creating lasting customer relationships. It allows you to provide personalised support, better understand customer needs and resolve issues quicker.
AI can analyse usage data – keeping your contact centre running smoothly. It can give you real-time insight into each customer’s preferences, so agents can understand customer needs before they pick up the phone.
Access customer feedback, engagement history, demographic data so agents know the best way to respond. On top of this, AI can undertake sentiment analysis – looking at the way your customers are typing (fast or slow), the type of language they’re using (aggressive/agreeable) and more.
Read our AI and Cloud Contact Centre eBook for more information.
Customers prefer self-service
Gartner has found that 70% of customers are using self-service channels at some point during their journey to find a solution to their problem. This suggests that most customers who look for help from a business would prefer to solve it on their own if possible.
Customer contact centres should aim to enhance self-service capabilities – such as advanced chatbots, IVRs (Interactive Voice Response) and virtual assistants capable of responding to a host of questions. Self-service options need to be as intuitive as possible. Providing more options for people to easily find answers to their questions can cultivate happier, more loyal customers.
The contact centre landscape is evolving, and we don’t know what kinds of opportunities might emerge in 2023 and beyond. For now, these are some of the key areas making efficient contact centres in 2023.
We partner with Five9 to bring our customers a contact centre solution. Onecom OneCloud, which bundles Teams, the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Centre, Microsoft’s Direct Routing and other enterprise tools into one managed service – giving your business everything it needs in one package.
