Helping contact centre agents to provide the highest level of customer service requires a raft of technologies and techniques. Perhaps the single most important factor is reducing the friction that service agents face when trying to put their skills into practice – in short, ensuring they have the correct tools to help the customers.
To this end, contact centre technology innovator Content Guru has recently updated its storm® contact centre solution with significant enhancements in inaccessibility, flexibility and ease of use. To find out more, CX Today welcomes Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO and Co-Founder of Content Guru.
The storm Desktop Task Assistant (DTA®), the company’s intuitive, omni-channel agent desktop, has been updated with a raft of new features including a new visual design in line with the latest UI conventions, flexible layouts, and compatibility with the small-screen devices now used by some home-based workers. “The new visual design is consistent with new generation storm products and is based on the latest UI conventions to ensure it is the best of its kind,” says Taylor. “Notably, it is small screen-friendly, to enable agents to use it seamlessly on any device, so they can work from wherever. Slim mode is available for narrower screens such as mobiles. Squared corners and single-coloured icons give the interface a sleek look that agents can appreciate.”
Recognising Agent Individuality
A key driver of the redesign has been ensuring that more personalisation is possible. “The layout is flexible and can be adapted to fit each individual user’s needs – because not every service agent works the same way,” says Taylor. “DTA components can be placed where you want them on the screen, meaning you see what you want to see, and only what you want to see. Components display in more compact formats when DTA size is reduced, and the layout adapts to part-screen views. The design is now a better fit for smaller displays such as tablets, allowing for BYOD.”
The new DTA also addresses a challenge common to the modern contact centre worker – staying on top of communications across a range of different communication channels. “DTA enables a contact centre to be truly omni-channel, with video and voice calls, emails, SMS messages, social media messages and web chats all converged in a single intuitive interface,” explains Taylor. storm DTA also integrates with Content Guru’s storm CKS® (Customer Knowledge System) Knowledge Management, for easy access to articles selected by natural language processing (NLP) capture, the subject line of an email, webchats or hashtags. “For example, if a customer calls into an organisation, NLP in the front-end of the call can detect keywords in their speech such as the word ‘refund’,” says Taylor. “In response, CKS Knowledge Management will automatically screen-pop an article about the refund process to the agent taking the call, to prepare that agent ahead of time and reduce the time spent searching for information, which typically averages 10% of any call.”
Accessible to All
The redesign was focused on improving productivity and accessibility for agents in general, as well as those with disabilities, as Taylor explains. “The new version of DTA is fully compliant with the most up-to-date Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG v2.1 aa) and is suitable for users with a broad range of disabilities, including blindness and low vision, limited movement, and photosensitivity. It was really important to us that our solution should be inclusive for all agents, widening productive career opportunities and increasing the pool of talent for employers.”
Content Guru ensured the redesign also catered to the flexibility in working patterns inherent in the modern contact centre. “storm DTA Web iPath® delivers secure voice calls via an agent’s browser so that they can make and receive customer calls from anywhere, at any time, as long as they have access to an internet-enabled device,” says Taylor. “Web iPath leverages an audio device, such as a wireless USB headset, to connect agents to customers. The solution also enables video calls, which can be initiated by an agent via a consumer’s mobile device ad hoc, without prior setup or installing an app, as well as photo sending, file and screen sharing. Inter-agent collaboration is enhanced, too, with user-to-user chat.”
The ethos of ‘equality of experience’ that runs through DTA’s redesign ensures agents can deliver best-in-class customer experience from anywhere. “We want our solution to be useful for all agents, whoever they are, wherever they work, via whichever device they choose, and whenever they want. This was the main aim when we were designing our DTA V2.”
