Serving your customers well requires being responsive and providing them with an easy way to get in touch. Any company that requires continued support for its customers can find benefits in a contact center for business. If you’re considering a better way to deliver customer service, you’ll want to know the value of creating a contact center.
What Is a Contact Center?
A contact center is a department that handles all communication with customers, from simple questions to more complex needs. To handle all these inquiries, companies often look to a platform to streamline the process. Additionally, most contact centers are now omnichannel, meaning they combine phone, email, social media, and chat into one queue. So, what kind of software do contact centers for business use?
Contact Center Software: CCaaS Provides an Integrated Solution
Contact center software, also known as CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service), is a cloud-based customer experience platform with an array of features to drive efficiency. What’s ideal about CCaaS is that it’s accessible from wherever. You no longer need customer service reps to be in one space, which is essential in a hybrid-dominated work ecosystem.
Because it lives in the cloud, you don’t have to maintain it or invest in expensive hardware. The costs are only the monthly fee. Deployment of CCaaS is fast, and you can be ready to launch in only a few days.
So, how do you know if your company could benefit from a contact center?
Why You Need a Contact Center for Business
Having a contact center provides an operational framework for customer communication. Today’s customers expect fast, accurate answers. Research suggests that 75 percent of people expect help within five minutes. To meet these expectations, a contact center supported by modern software is critical.
Let’s look further at the reasons you should establish a contact center.
Contact Centers Improve the Customer Experience
A bad customer experience can negate loyalty. To ensure that doesn’t occur, you need a solution that makes interactions convenient and friction-free for customers. A contact center provides several ways to enhance customer experiences, such as:
- Providing customer history through a CRM (customer relationship management) tool that integrates with contact center software. Agents can immediately understand prior interactions to serve the customer better.
- Routing inquiries to the right agent by using IVR (interactive voice response) that gathers information about why they are contacting you. As a result, customers don’t get passed around and grow frustrated.
- Offering choice on how to connect through omnichannel options. Customers can call, email, chat, or use social media. They’ll appreciate the convenience of contacting you how they choose.
Additionally, you’ll elevate customer experience because the responses from agents are consistent and accurate. That’s much harder to do when everyone has to play the role of customer support.
Contact Centers Provide Insights with Data
Another reason to consider a contact center is all the data it creates. All these customer interactions create valuable information. You can use this to understand things like:
- Areas of a product or service that need work because so many customers report issues
- Customer sentiment around your brand and customer service
- When you have high volumes of inquiries, so you can staff smarter and have coverage when you need it
- The performance of agents around speed and effectiveness, so you can train or counsel those with concerning numbers
With so much data available, it’s a gold mine for marketing, sales, and product.
Contact Centers Are Time and Money Savers
With cloud-based software, you already reduce the cost of ownership. Contact centers offer more savings. Having technology in place means agents can be more productive, which could reduce the need for more headcount. Having a centralized system also means you can consolidate tools and move away from more costly modules that only do a few things.
The time savings is just as valuable. Contact centers are efficient, automating many aspects. With well-informed agents, resolutions occur faster, which benefits customers and your business. You can also run reports, manage queues, and assist agents in real-time, all of which contribute to less wasted time.
Contact Centers Can Support Outbound Messaging, Too
Another reason to consider a contact center is the outbound messaging capabilities. You can send these through voice, SMS, and email. They act as reminders or deliver important communications customers should know. They can even be revenue generators. Here are some examples:
- Appointment reminders to reduce no-shows
- Alerts on deliveries
- Emergency notifications
- Bill payments due
- Reminders to schedule appointments
- Promotions and discounts
Having this functionality allows you to scale and customize these messages. If you currently have staff doing this manually, you’ll save considerable time with automation.
Contact Centers Are Scalable
A contact center can grow with you. Developing one now will be critical to your company’s growth, as its focus is on customer experience. Using a solution in the cloud makes it easy to add new users, so there’s no delay in getting an agent ready. Since you’re centralizing these functions, you have a solid foundation to build upon as your business earns more customers and revenue.
Contact Center for Business: A Key Component for Success
A contact center for business delivers so many benefits. Building this department and empowering it with technology enables better customer relations. Happy customers stay with you, and retention is a success indicator.
Learn more about contact centers and the technology available by reading our guide on contact center software.
Rob Oscanyan
Robert Oscanyan is a Senior Director of Product Marketing at Intermedia, where he focuses on helping businesses improve their customer experience using Intermedia's award-winning cloud communications solutions. Rob has over a decade of experience spanning market research, messaging, and elevating the voice of the customer. In his free time, he constantly creating new adventures with his wife, seven kids, and a small army of pets.
July 5, 2022
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