In recent years, contact centre technologies have made tremendous gains in cutting organisational costs and increasing efficiency. However, in today’s world organisations need to take on a more strategic role. It’s critical for contact centre managers and customer-focused executives to ensure that agent metrics align with business objectives and that cloud technologies are unifying communications tools for more effective data analysis.
Many organisations are aware that their ageing, on-premises call centres are adversely impacting their business. Not only are these systems complex to maintain but also costly to run. Legacy call centre technology inhibits agents, especially as relevant customer information isn’t always to hand or presented in an integrated fashion. The bottom line is that old and outdated systems have an impact on customer retention and profits. But how can cloud contact centre technologies drive better business results?
1 – Tracking Agent Performance
Most contact centres use multiple, disconnected systems to track agent performance. Fewer than a third of organisations typically use an application to integrate this data. Instead, many waste time transferring it into Excel spreadsheets. Improving agent performance tracking can help enterprise employees increase customer satisfaction while helping companies meet overall business goals. Cloud contact centre solutions are well positioned to increase customer service agility and improve agent-customer interactions on the fly.
2 – Aligning Agents with Customers
Although most contact centres will measure agents against success metrics, it’s also important that they provide operators with opportunities for further training. Perhaps going one step further matching agents with compatible or specific types of customers in order to increase the chance of positive outcomes.
Collecting and analysing agent performance data can lead to outstanding results if it’s done right. One of the most effective things organisations can do is route calls to the agents best suited to handle them. The majority of multi-site centres employ this technique, while most single-site centres continue to use traditional routing processes, directing calls to the next available or least busy agent or using a round-robin system.
Centres using agent performance data to route calls to the best available agent said the process mapped well to their company’s business goals. With cloud contact centres, organisations can choose among many criteria to determine what “best available agent” means to them. Many organisations base these decisions on the kind of skills and training required for the call. Others make choices based on the communication channel, for instance, voice, chat, or email. Still, others use customer account status or customer value.
3 – Getting agents the information they need
To make customers happy and stand the best chance of solving problems on the first call, agents need quick and easy access to company subject matter experts, who are often outside the contact centre. At many centres, agents have no idea where subject matter experts are or when they might be available.
Today’s cutting-edge cloud contact centres incorporate enterprise unified communication tools which allow agents to instantly see the availability of people they need to contact and choose the means of communication that work best for them. These enterprise-grade features help speed up calls and improve problem resolution.
4 – Delivering desired business outcomes
Contact centres are now capable of delivering key insights that can improve customer loyalty, business growth, and innovation. Social media has amplified the customer’s voice to a degree that businesses can’t afford to ignore. Providing outstanding service has never been so important and as Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, explained,
“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. If you make a customer unhappy, they won’t tell five friends, they’ll tell 5,000 friends”
Positive customer experience is paramount and if organisations want to stand out from the competition and build trust then it’s key agents have the right tools for the job.
5 – Driving improvement through analytics
Modern cloud contact centres give companies the data needed to understand business performance and make informed decisions. It’s no surprise that analytics enable better agent performance, but they also improve overall customer experience by providing actionable feedback that can lead to implementing changes for better results.
Companies can profile clients according to business segments and deliver reports via interactive graphics. This data can then be fed back into the routing engine to make the system more intelligent with each new customer interaction.
These capabilities are vital given how important it is for companies to improve customer experience. Aligning corporate goals with customer satisfaction is a key performance indicator that a growing number of companies are now focusing on as well. By implementing changes based on cloud contact centre data analytics, forward-thinking companies will continue to drive better results and set themselves apart from competing solutions.
Guest Blog by Terry Traina, SVP of Engineering at Masergy
Masergy help innovative global enterprises transform their hybrid networking, cloud communications and cyber security.
