Introducing the Intermedia Business Innovators series – where Intermedia honors business leaders who are improving customer care, employee engagement, and business operations through innovative thinking and decisive action. Hear the stories from the business innovators first-hand.
Every business wants to be responsive to customer needs. Today’s customers now engage providers in various channels, and being able to track, monitor, and address these interactions is paramount to customer satisfaction. CMLS Financial, Canada’s largest, independently-owned mortgage company, shared their story with us about leveraging cloud-based contact center software to serve customers better.
Tara Somerset, Managing Director for Residential Servicing, joined me recently to talk about the company’s experience with deployment, transitioning to remote operations, and the impact of the solution on customer satisfaction and efficiency.
Building a Contact Center
Before engaging with Intermedia, the company didn’t have a formal contact center. Without a system in place, the company didn’t have a good handle on customer service demand or what channels their customers were most likely to use.
Ms. Somerset said, “We didn’t have a good sense of what customers needed, how many people were calling, or how much staff we needed.”
Deploying a contact center solution was necessary to better understand customer need and enable them to be more proactive with their customer care. In making a choice, CMLS looked at both on-prem and cloud-based solutions. “In looking at what was available in the industry, we found that Intermedia’s cloud-based solution provided us more autonomy and flexibility,” Ms. Somerset recalled.
“It allowed for control of set-up and customization of the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, and those were significant differentiators.”
In a fast-paced industry such as theirs, CMLS was also concerned about scaling quickly, easily adding new agents, and, above all, being responsive to customer need. The inherent remote-ready versatility of a cloud-based contact center answered these needs, made all the more welcome when COVID-19 struck.
Transitioning to a Remote Customer Care Team
Once COVID-19 became a reality, CMLS, like any other business, had to pivot. After March 16, the company moved the team to a remote model. Because they were on our cloud-based contact center software, the shift was easy. “We have our team using Intermedia at home with no issue. We were able to set up additional toll-free lines, add staff members to take on calls, and use dynamic notifications to respond to customers quickly,” Ms. Somerset shared.
The Impact of the Cloud-Based Contact Center: Happier Customers, More Efficient Processes
Along with helping the customer care team quickly transition to working remotely, CMLS has seen several improvements in how they serve customers. “We recently surveyed our customers, and we received an 81 percent satisfaction back from our customers, which we were very pleased about. That was up from 5 percent the year prior,” Ms. Somerset said.
Increasing customer satisfaction is one important effect of the solution. But it’s also been able to do much more behind the scenes, including improving efficiencies and streamlining workflows.
Ms. Somerset identified the email queue as one of the best features. “It’s a fantastic piece. It allowed us to see how many emails we’re getting and how quickly we can turn those around,” she noted.
Having this type of data enabled the company to staff more effectively. By answering emails quickly, it led to a decrease in the number of calls. Customers aren’t having to phone in to follow up on their emails or waiting for a resolution. “The queuing itself is such a benefit. We have several departments who receive emails, and with the contact center solution, we’ve been able to be more responsive to initial email inquiries, which has led to an overall reduction of customer service emails by 45 percent,” Ms. Somerset added.
The Agent Experience: Easy to Use and Far from Clunky
Another critical aspect of any software solution is the ease of use for agents. Businesses want something fast and easy to deploy and that has a very low learning curve. That ideal experience is possible with cloud-based contact center software.
“Our agents love it. They get on it right away. It’s easy to use, just a click here and there. Screens come up very fast. It’s not clunky at all. It’s a smooth process. We’re all happy using it,” Ms. Somerset commented.
Cloud-Based Contact Center Software Is a Boost to Any Business
We invite you to watch the full interview with Ms. Somerset to learn more about CMLS’ transition to a cloud-based contact center solution and the benefits it has delivered. ,
If you’d like to learn more about Intermedia Contact Center, explore the Contact Center software product page for product details, data sheets, and more.
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.
October 1, 2020
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