Choosing the Best Contact Center Software

Being able to give your customers a seamless experience when they reach out to your business is a huge competitive advantage. With the right contact center software, you have the power to create efficient interactions, meaningful insights, productive teams, and an overall superior customer experience. All this adds up to a sustainable boost to your bottom line.

With today’s technology, offering an exceptional contact center experience is easier than ever. Traditionally, contact centers were the domain of big-budget companies that could deal with the complexity and the costs – but the development of cloud-based contact center software has changed everything.

Businesses of all sizes, budgets, and industries can finally take advantage of the benefits of offering a superior customer experience. But, when seeking the best contact center software for your business, which features and benefits should you look for?

Answer these questions to ensure you connect with the optimal solution for your business.

Can Customers Reach You via Their Preferred Methods?

Customers today have varying preferences when it comes to contacting customer support.  When it comes to dealing with complicated issues, however, 40 percent pick up the phone so they can talk to someone personally.

You want customers to have the same seamless, responsive experience when contacting your business, no matter which channel they want to use. Your contact center software should be able to handle voice calls, chats, SMS, and email – and it should have the capability to deal with all of those channels at high volumes.

How Easily Will You Be Able to Integrate with Third-Party Applications?

To equip agents to deliver better experiences, you’ll probably want to integrate your CRM or other applications into your contact center software. The most recent Future of the Contact Center report found that 35 percent of organizations planned to integrate contact center tools in 2019, and 36 percent believed that improved dashboards were a priority for contact center success.

Your software should be able to easily integrate with third-party apps. This will make it easier for your agents to offer greater personalization and reduce wait times. This isn’t something to overlook – 33 percent of consumers who ended their relationship with a business last year did so because of a lack of personalization in the customer experience.

Will You Have Access to Real-Time Data Visualization?

Consistently superior customer experiences are the guiding metric for contact center excellence. This goes for everyone: from tech support to the billing agents in your financial department. Because customer experience is an organization-wide duty, detailed reporting and analytics are a major consideration when choosing the best contact center software.

Look for real-time monitoring, so you can recognize issues right away and respond quickly. You’ll also want in-depth historical reporting that’s visually represented and easy to digest; trends and patterns in historical data can help you plan how to optimize future customer interactions.

Can You Scale with Your Contact Center Software?

No matter what your needs are now, in the future your business will inevitably change. From higher call volumes to multi-site contact centers, you need software that can grow with your business. That way, you won’t overpay for the features you don’t need now – but you’ll have the flexibility to scale your contact center capabilities on demand, using your current software.

How Quickly Will You Be Up and Running?

The reality is, businesses today are focused on customer experience more than ever. Waiting weeks or months to get your contact center up and running isn’t something you can afford to do.  Choose a provider that’s able to get you started with minimal lead time.

Implementing a contact center doesn’t have to be an overwhelming, expensive, high-risk venture for your business. At Intermedia, we offer Contact Center Software as a Service (CCaaS) platform that will have you delivering a winning customer experience in days. You’ll have access to advanced contact center tools, real-time data and historical reporting, and easy integration.

With a variety of plans available to suit different business needs, you can get the contact center solution that perfectly fits your current budget and business goals. Find out more about how a cloud-based contact center solution can take your business to the next level.

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.