The NICE Contact Center suite of CX-focused tools provides companies with some of the most innovative solutions in the modern marketplace. In the last couple of years alone, NICE has proven to be one of the most creative and successful leaders in the customer experience space.
Investing in everything from groundbreaking generative AI to solutions that unify employee and customer experience, NICE has changed the contact center landscape for the better. It’s little wonder the company ended up with over 1 million agents using the CXOne platform in 2023.
The question is, which NICE contact center features will have the biggest impact on your CX initiatives? Today, we’re looking at some of the most impressive capabilities agents and sales specialists can access within the NICE ecosystem.
The Best NICE Contact Center Features for CX
Ranked as a market leader in the 2023 CCaaS Magic Quadrant, NICE has proven the potential of its contact center solutions multiple times. The features of the NICE cloud landscape you rely on most may vary depending on your business and goals. However, we think the following tools potentially have the most to offer for brands looking to compete in the age of next-gen CX.
1. AI-Powered Omnichannel
Let’s start with perhaps this list’s broadest NICE contact center feature. The NICE CXOne platform is more than just your average solution for omnichannel communications. According to NICE, it’s the first and only completely cloud-native platform with an AI-centric focus.
CXOne lets companies reach their customers across various channels, from chat and messaging to audio and video, while leveraging the power of artificial intelligence. The AI solution is trained in the world’s largest labeled CX dataset to help businesses deliver more seamless experiences.
The unified platform is constantly growing and evolving, bringing more intelligence and innovation to businesses around the globe. It’s part of what sets NICE apart as a CCaaS market leader.
2. Conversational AI and Chatbots
Conversational AI and chatbots form part of the vast selection of NICE contact center features for digitizing the customer experience. With the easy-to-use NICE cloud platform, companies can meet their customers wherever they are, using smart self-service and customized virtual agents.
You can use tools to build your own bot or bring your own conversational AI interface into the NICE ecosystem through third-party NLP engines. Plus, NICE makes enriching your conversational bots with integrations to your CRM systems and other apps easy.
Companies can even build proactive bots using the NICE ContactEngine hub. The solution manages intelligent conversations, predicts customer needs, and delivers personalized experiences to every consumer, increasing your chances of sales and loyalty.
3. NICE Contact Center Self Service
Self-service solutions have become a must-have part of any thriving omnichannel contact center. But building impressive self-service experiences is often easier said than done. Fortunately, NICE offers companies access to an intelligent tool for building self-service systems quickly.
Not only can you build intelligent bots, but you can also design knowledge hubs and state-of-the-art automated workflows. NICE Enlighten XO can even analyze conversations to build more effective self-service experiences, identifying customer intent, agent tasks, and more.
NICE also offers companies access to a robust collection of self-service analytics. Visual dashboards and intuitive tools provide insights into potential containment and churn problems. You can instantly track metrics associated with agent transfers and lost calls.
4. NICE Enlighten AI
Probably the most exciting suite of NICE contact center features to emerge in the last year, NICE Enlighten AI is an all-in-one toolkit for building intelligent customer interactions. Otherwise known as “Enlighten AI for CX,” the solution helps users proactively act on CX insights in real-time.
There are tools for boosting customer satisfaction, such as real-time coaching and quality insights, as well as dedicated AI solutions for vulnerable customers. Companies can automate complaint management with Enlighten AI and get an insight into common consumer friction points.
Plus, thanks to the power of generative AI, the NICE Enlighten solution can automatically summarize conversations and help sales teams unlock more sales. There’s even a dedicated “Enlighten Copilot” solution for customer agent support and “Enlighten Autopilot” for self-service.
5. NICE Contact Center Analytics
While analytics may be a standard feature of the modern contact center, few CCaaS vendors deliver the same in-depth insights as NICE. The NICE contact center suite is brimming with various unique reporting tools. You can leverage AI-powered omnichannel insights into standard metrics, consumer sentiment, and more.
There’s even an “AutoDiscovery” feature for surfacing critical insights from customer interactions. Companies can create custom reports and dashboards or leverage over 90 pre-built solutions inside the NICE contact center dashboard. NICE even offers powerful customer journey analytics.
You can use the toolkit to track how customers move through touchpoints, where sales stall, and where consumer sentiment changes. Business leaders can also build on their metrics by collecting customer insights using NICE feedback management tools.
Moreover, teams can combine NICE CXOne and Salesforce Einstein to unlock specific guidance, trends, and patterns in their sales landscape. There are automatic data-linking tools, customization options, and even data-driven predictions available within the suite.
6. The NICE Automation Studio
Contact center automation tools don’t just have a significant impact on employee productivity. They also empower companies to deliver more seamless, intuitive experiences to customers. As a leader in digital experiences, NICE offers a range of automation tools for business leaders.
The NICE Automation Finder, for instance, helps companies pinpoint opportunities for automation that might improve their bottom line and employee performance. The NICE Automation Studio allows users to create automated workflows with a simple, no-code interface.
The clean and user-friendly interface empowers citizen developers to create unique automation use cases in moments. There are even specialized tools for building attended bots, like the NEVA assistant.
7. Intelligent Routing and Journey Orchestration
Part of the Enlighten AI collection of intelligent NICE contact center features, the Enlighten Routing service helps companies create smarter connections for consumers. AI models and holistic CX data work together to instantly predict the best match for improved KPIs.
The solution is the only AI routing tool with pre-trained models built on the industry’s largest set of CX data. Plus, it works seamlessly alongside NICE’s other tools for journey orchestration, such as the “Automatic Call Distribution” system and predictive dialer.
With NICE, companies can automatically map customer journeys, learn more about the needs of their target audience, and adjust their routing strategies with AI, all without purchasing external apps.
8. NICE Workforce and Performance Management
Today’s business leaders know that excellent CX depends on their ability to engage and empower their employees. Unfortunately, as teams grow and become more distributed, organizing your human resources can become complex. That’s why the NICE contact center offers valuable WFM tools to help get your organization on track.
The NICE WFM software includes access to an intelligent omnichannel forecasting engine designed to help you maximize your most important asset. It can provide insights into how teams can boost efficiency and reduce idle time. Plus, there are tools for tracking key performance metrics, too.
NICE helps organizations motivate staff members with real-time dashboards, supervisor insights, and gamification options. There’s also a dedicated “Sales Performance Management” service for sales teams, with territory management, sales crediting, and tools for managing compensation.
9. NICE Contact Center Interaction Guidance
Speaking of keeping teams informed and engaged, NICE also offers features to help drive your team members towards their goals. Real-time interaction guidance, powered by artificial intelligence, helps ensure every agent gets the support they need, wherever they are.
Agents receive in-the-moment coaching with desktop tips based on keyword analysis and customer satisfaction metrics. Supervisors also get instant visibility into which agents perform best and who might need additional coaching.
There’s also an AI whisper feature called “Drive CX,” which consistently provides ever-evolving support with embedded machine learning. These tools are also supported by the NICE Enlighten AI “Copilot” solution for generative-AI-driven support.
10. Call and Screen Recording
More than just an essential tool for compliance, the NICE contact center call and screen recording features help businesses boost visibility into their operations. The all-in-one toolkit gives businesses complete control over the conversations they record and store in any contact center.
Plus, there’s an easy-to-use interface for managing and tracking recordings. NICE makes it easy to mitigate risk with GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-ready solutions. Moreover, there are automated and on-demand masking solutions, consent-based recording options, and key management tools.
All of these solutions ensure companies can collect insights and data from the contact center without putting the security or privacy of consumers at risk.
11. The NICE Open Cloud Platform
Like many leading CCaaS solutions today, NICE knows the value of playing well with others. The open cloud platform offered to contact centers allows companies to connect all the tools and services they want into one ecosystem.
On the CXExchange, companies can find many easy-to-use apps and tools for business intelligence, customer relationship management, and more. NICE also offers a state-of-the-art Voice as a Service option for companies who want to add voice functionality to tools like Microsoft Teams. Plus, you can connect your contact center directly with a host of UCaaS tools.
There are also CRM integrations and a host of developer tools that give team members more control over their connections and automation.
12. ElevateAI
Finally, combining CCaaS and CPaaS, ElevateAI by NICE is a fantastic tool for any company that wants to embed AI capabilities into their existing apps and solutions. Trained on the world’s biggest CX datasets, ElevateAI can integrate with various solutions to give you more insights.
This powerful solution works with various technology stacks, comes with industry-leading transcription, and promises automatic redaction of sensitive information. With ElevateAI, companies can rapidly transcribe every discussion on any app.
Plus, the solution can process audio files quickly and deliver behind-the-scenes views of empathy and sentiment with no code required.
The Top NICE Contact Center Features for CX
The wide range of NICE contact center features available to business leaders today is phenomenal for improving customer and employee experiences. With NICE, organizations can engage employees wherever they are, tap into the latest AI innovations, and build seamless customer journeys. It’s no wonder the company is one of the most popular CCaaS vendors.
With its continued commitment to innovation and growth, we will likely see plenty of new and enhanced NICE contact center features in the coming years.
