More than ever, customer experience is the deciding factor between which companies thrive and which struggle to hang on. For instance, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for great CX, while a third will leave a brand they love after just one negative interaction.
The moment when CX can mean the most is when customers have a problem or need additional support. This is where contact center solutions offer a cost-effective way to build brand loyalty and ultimately generate revenue.
Discover all you need to know about successfully implementing a contact center as a service in your organization.
Key Takeaways:
- The best contact centers are omnichannel cloud-based solutions.
- The latest features for contact center solutions include artificial intelligence-assisted analytics and workforce management optimization.
- Top contact center providers put a premium on support, security, and quality of service.
What Are Contact Center Solutions?
When customers need answers or assistance from your company, they’ll expect you to have a contact center to help them when other resources aren’t enough. Likewise, contact center agents can call out to customers for sales, marketing, and scheduling.
With contact center solutions, you can manage high volumes of calls and communications across channels.
What Are the Different Types of Contact Centers?
The right type of contact center for your business depends on the type of communications your agents handle, the location of the team, and how well your channels integrate.
Inbound vs. Outbound
Inbound contact centers are where people call in for support, scheduling, and questions. Outbound is when you execute coordinated and systematic outreach. Nowadays, the best contact center solutions are capable of both.
On-premise vs. Cloud-Based
On-premise contact centers are rarely necessary. To start, they are more expensive because you need to supply the office space, equipment, and infrastructure for your team. You also have to secure and manage all of these assets, and you can only hire people in that specific location.
Cloud contact center solutions are web-based and much less expensive to install and manage. Everything you need is accessible anywhere with a capable device and an internet connection.
As a result, you can hire agents from anywhere. Say you have customers who are literally on the other side of the world. You can employ workers who live in that area to handle calls, providing a more personalized experience. These digital contact centers also allow you to scale up and down rapidly and make instantaneous and inexpensive adjustments to your system.
Call Centers vs. Multichannel Contact Centers vs. Omnichannel Contact Center Solutions
Call centers are outdated systems that only allow you to make and receive phone calls. However, most customers now expect to be able to reach you through various channels.
Multichannel contact centers take things up a notch by providing different software for each channel. You can handle text, web chat, email, and calling. The problem is that each medium is separate, causing bottlenecks in workflows.
Imagine a customer reaches out to you by email, but their problem is complex enough that the support ticket has to escalate to a phone call. With a multichannel center, the customer has to deal with two different teams that might have different databases and information. The caller will have to explain the issue again and wait longer for a resolution, leading to frustration and poor CX.
In contrast, omnichannel service is the apex of contact center solutions. Think of it like a lot of modern communications: When you’re talking with your friend or co-worker, you can easily take a discussion from text to phone to email and stay on the same page. Your business should be able to offer the same to your customers.
With an omnichannel solution, the customer always has a smooth interaction, whether speaking to the same agent or a new one. That’s because all the customer service channels operate on the same software that your entire team uses.
When an agent records details about a discussion, those facts are available to the next agent to preserve the continuity of service. This leads to quicker resolutions, happier customers, and appreciative agents.
What Features Do Your Contact Center Solutions Need To Offer?
There are dozens of features that your contact center should have so that you can provide peak customer service. The top elements include:
- Easy-to-program interactive voice response
- Agent reporting and analytics
- Business software integrations
- Secure artificial intelligence with natural language processing
- Workforce management and optimization
These essentials can help you boost CX and wow your customers.
How Can You Pick the Best Contact Center Software?
When choosing a vendor for your contact center solutions, check the following three areas.
1. Onboarding and Support
Time is precious, so you need to get your contact center solutions up and running as soon as possible. Your communications provider should demonstrate a real commitment to helping you install your system and offering world-class support for troubleshooting.
2. Security
Enjoy worry-free security that protects you from cyberattacks with:
- Data centers that meet SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 standards
- Level 1 on the Security, Trust, Assurance, and Risk Registry from the Cloud Security Alliance
- ISO 27001 Certification
Consequently, you can rest easy knowing that your and your customers’ data are secure.
3. Voice Quality and Reliability
Poor sound quality and inconsistent service can tarnish your customers’ view of your brand. Your provider should offer outstanding audio as long as you can access stable internet service. Plus, you should be able to regularly check quality of service status reports.
In addition, you must be able to count on the service to be functional. In the 21st century, the minimum acceptable amount of uptime is 99.999%. That’s less than 30 seconds of downtime a month!
Find Out How Intermedia’s Contact Center Solutions Help You Start Driving Results
You need to check off all of the requirements above for outstanding contact center solutions. Thankfully, Intermedia Contact Center has it all. Schedule a callback to discuss which plan is right for you.
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.
February 24, 2024
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