The quality of your call center means everything to your customer service and sales, given that most consumers prefer to communicate over the phone. What are the vital call center phone systems features for your operation?
Find out the 10 essential features a call center needs.
Key Takeaways:
- Your call center needs tools that help you remain competitive in the marketplace.
- ACD, IVR, call analytics, softphones, and call prioritizing are crucial to providing efficient customer service.
- Your call center should have business software integration, DID, omnichannel communication, internal chat, and call presence.
- Call monitoring, whispering, and barging improve training.
Why You Need Top-of-the-Line Call Center Phone Systems Features
Call center phone systems features are more than extra bells and whistles you add to a phone line. These components elevate your communications from simple connections to powerful tools for customer support.
Whether you’re doing inbound, outbound, or both, a modern cloud-hosted call center helps you increase customer satisfaction for a fraction of the costs of traditional public branch exchanges.
1. Automatic Call Distribution
ACD routes your calls to agents in line with your predetermined policy. Getting calls to the right person the first time can work wonders for your productivity.
A top feature of ACD is skills-based routing, which gets customers to the agents with the qualifications to help with a particular problem or question. Simultaneous routing rings all calls at once to make sure a caller reaches whoever is available.
Regardless of the system you desire, your call center dashboard lets you set up routing with whatever rules suit your organization.
2. Interactive Voice Response
IVR is one of the top call center phone systems features because it helps you appear more professional and attentive with a 24/7 digital attendant that does more than answer calls. Callers can handle routine account and payment procedures with secure artificial intelligence for convenient self-service.
Using call queuing with your IVR lets you keep numerous incoming callers on hold when agents are busy. The team can then handle each person in an appropriate order according to their needs.
3. Call Analytics
The only thing standing between you and improving your call center efficiency is having clear and current metrics that rate your performance. Up-to-date analytics are among many companies’ favorite call center phone systems features.
In the past, you could only rely on agent self-reporting and random samples when your management team had time to monitor and record. Now, AI captures analytics for a consistent overview of agent activity and the mood of a conversation.
4. Softphones
You can purchase equipment that does a fantastic job for remote and in-office workers, but you can also use apps that operate on your team’s personal and mobile devices to take calls anywhere.
These “softphones” offer excellent functionality that allows your leadership the same monitoring capabilities and preserves data securely.
5. Caller Priority
When 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your revenue, prioritizing high-value customers is one of the most necessary call center phone systems features. Priority alerts put these key clients at the top of the call queue so you can give them the gold-star service they deserve.
6. Business Software Integration
Your call center brings in crucial data that benefits other teams. Entering and reentering details into your customer relationship management software or enterprise resource planning is a recipe for inefficiency and mistakes.
Find a call center software that connects to popular business applications. Access to an API platform lets your developers link your call center with your customized apps.
7. Direct Inward Dial Numbers
DID numbers can create a local presence and build a more personal connection between account managers or customer success representatives with clients. Instead of having to proceed through an auto attendant or IVR, callers can reach an employee with a direct number.
This call center feature also prevents incoming connections from tying up your line.
8. Omnichannel Communication
Reports show that companies retain 89% of their customers when they offer reliable service across multiple channels. Your call center phone systems features should allow you to provide customer service effortlessly across different communication methods.
Take a conversation from chat to voice and back again while keeping the pertinent info in one convenient digital spot. You can also keep emails and text communications together and integrate the discussion into your CRM.
Customers will appreciate the seamless interaction in whatever communication mode they desire at the moment.
9. Call Presence and Internal Chat
Customers often turn to online manuals and FAQs before calling customer support, so when they do call in, their queries are more complex than quick fixes can usually resolve. Instead of agents having to put a caller on hold to reach an expert or a different department, chat tools let the agent communicate with a team member to get answers quickly.
Your call center phone systems features also enable easier internal connections and transfers. With the call presence function, agents and managers can determine which team members are available before a transfer so callers aren’t endlessly on hold.
10. Call Monitor, Whisper, and Barge
Call monitoring lets trainers and supervisors listen in to conversations without callers knowing. With whisper, the trainer can discreetly coach an agent, while barge allows the trainer to jump in and help without having to put the caller on hold.
Your Source for the Best Call Center Phone Systems Features
This list has only scratched the surface of what you can do with the best call center phone systems features. Discover everything a contact center can do for you with assistance from our team here at Intermedia.
Mariel Santos
Mariel Santos is the Director of Marketing Communications at Intermedia
April 5, 2023
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