The acceleration of digital transformation, evolving customer expectations, and changing work environments has placed significant pressure on contact center vendors in recent years. As companies continue to move more of their technologies into the cloud, and experiment with new tools to capture, engage and retain customers, technology giants are growing more diverse.
Many of the biggest brands in the tech landscape have updated their offerings in recent years, straying away from their specialties to explore new areas of trending tech. Contact center leaders are now offering Unified Communication and CPaaS tools. Brands previously known for their productivity toolkits are exploring the areas of customer service and customer relationship management.
Unfortunately, for niche vendors, this means it’s harder than ever to effectively capture and retain clients. Companies offering specialist solutions for quality assurance, analytics, and workforce management now need to compete with more brands than ever before.
The only way for brands to survive, is to find new ways of showcasing their value.
How to Demonstrate Value as a Niche Vendor
The good news for niche vendors in the contact center landscape is there are still opportunities to take advantage of. While many major tech giants are investing in the creation of simplistic specialist tools for their portfolios, few can deliver the same level of quality as a specialist brand.
This means niche companies can still capture the attention of a broad audience, provided they can demonstrate consistent value. Business leaders need to develop a strategy that allows them to differentiate themselves from other companies, highlight the core benefits they can deliver, and earn the trust of their target audience.
So, where can businesses get started?
Step 1: Know Your Niche Audience
The first step companies need to take towards delivering exceptional value to customers in today’s cluttered contact center landscape is understanding the needs of their customers. Brands should begin by identifying their core areas of expertise, and examining the core pain points and issues their ideal customers need to overcome.
For instance, Evaluagent, the platform designed for quality assurance and coaching, serves companies looking to leverage more value out of their customer interactions. The solution eliminates common problems, like data silos and time-consuming admin work, by providing automated, efficient, and customizable tools for tracking crucial business metrics.
Step 2: Set Realistic Expectations
Building an effective and long-lasting partnerships in today’s world requires companies to not only deliver the right services, but also consistently deliver on their promises. The only way to do this is to set realistic expectations for what customers can achieve with a solution.
Today’s niche brands should be working with their target audience, to understand their issues, and deliver solutions that drive powerful results. Working hand-in-hand with customers allows organizations to set realistic expectations about what their tools and technologies can achieve. For instance, evaluagent promises companies the opportunity to evaluate metrics faster, automate workflows, and enhance coaching with real-time feedback.
Step 3: Invest in The Right Innovations
To deliver on the promises they make to their customers, niche contact center vendors need to ensure they’re constantly enhancing and improving their products. In this case, evaluagent ensures it can help to accelerate workflows by allowing businesses to leverage customized automation solutions.
Templates are available for scorecards when companies want to monitor commonplace metrics, but brands can also choose to set up their own monitoring and reporting strategies from scratch. The platform also minimizes inefficiencies by building the tools teams need to enhance quality assurance and coaching into one platform. For instance, evaluagent includes an in-built call player and ticket viewer, designed to reduce the time people spend navigating between tools and tabs.
Step 4: Constantly Differentiate
Differentiating service offerings in the contact center landscape today is becoming increasingly difficult, due to increasing levels of competition. This means companies need to be committed to constantly evaluating their toolkits, and finding new and improved ways to serve their audience.
Leveraging solutions like artificial intelligence could be a good way for some contact center vendors to help their customers get more value out of the tools they can use. Going above and beyond the basic features offered in standard CCaaS platforms is another excellent strategy. For instance, rather than just offering basic quality assurance reports, evaluagent allows companies to leverage in-depth insights which can be immediately translated into coaching opportunities for team members.
Step 5: Provide a Measurable ROI
It’s not enough for companies to simply deliver a powerful set of specialist tools in the niche contact center market today. As budgets continue to dwindle, and economic issues persevere, business buyers are prioritizing investments in tools that can deliver a rapid return on investment. This means vendors need to think about how they can consistently prove the value of their service to customers.
Analytical reports and tools which allow customers to monitor the impact of their solution on things like team productivity, customer experience, and client retention can make all the difference when building relationships with clients. Leading contact center vendors need to find ways of proving themselves to their customers, and validating the value of their offerings.
Demonstrate Value or Lose Customers
Ultimately, the competition in the contact center landscape is likely to continue increasing in the years ahead, as more companies continue to compete purely on the basis of customer satisfaction. Today, the contact center is an essential part of any business, giving companies the opportunity to delight, engage, and retain customers across every channel.
For niche vendors and businesses to set themselves apart from the bigger companies in the tech landscape, they need to prove they can do something incredible. Showcasing value, in the form of measurable ROI from products, constant investment in evolution, and exceptional customer service is a must for any contact center innovator.
“It’s paramount to nurture a constant feedback loop from customers (and their customers!) to ensure the delivery of the services, technology and features that have the most impact. We’re constantly innovating and exploring new ideas to set ourselves apart in a crowded landscape – we’re delighted that so many businesses enjoy great value from evaluagent.” – Garth Hinkel, Chief Product Officer, evaluagent