The modern e contact center is now more than just a simple call center that handles customer inquiries over the phone. It is now a hub for customer experience and contact center intelligence, all of which offers e contact center agents the resources they need to address customer quandaries across any communication channel.
Omnichannel communication is a key set of features provided by top e contact center providers today, as businesses increasingly go remote and globalize to serve international customer segments. Add to this the surmounting pressure from competing brands; with digital platforms now being a major source of revenue, businesses need to succeed in the goal of standing apart from the rest, else risk losing out to their competitors.
It is for this reason alone that customer loyalty is now of more importance than ever before. Solely attracting new customers isn’t going to suffice in the interest of bottom line growth, if existing customers aren’t retained for recurring business. As a result, e contact center vendors need to be mindful of how their clientele can both attract new customers while retaining existing ones, so sustainable business growth can be achieved amidst a highly competitive business landscape.
With no two businesses having the same e contact center needs, it is wise for teams to have an understanding of what their unique business requirements are, so that a relevant contact center strategy can first be built to serve applicable objectives. A suitable e contact center software can then execute this strategy, so that teams are always aligned with the needs of customers.
Benefits of an E Contact Center
A centralized console for complete customer communication
An e contact center can equip your employees with all the resources they need to handle customers efficiently, without having to toggle between multiple applications. Using a single, centralized console for omnichannel communication is one of the biggest benefits of an e contact center, since agents can not only interact with a customer over their communication channel of choice, but also view past interaction history across multiple channels over a single record/profile.
Scalability owing to cloud based services
As the best e contact center vendors offer their products via the cloud and on a SaaS basis, businesses need not worry about buying and maintaining bulky physical equipment. In exchange for a monthly or annual subscription, businesses can purchase an e contact center depending on the number of agents that need to be accommodated, and begin using the system directly through a web-based application. In essence, this is also what paves way for the contact center vs call center debate, as today’s e contact center goes above and beyond simply offering customers the means to talk to a support agent over the phone.
Integration with other departmental applications
Contact center integration with sister applications such as CRM, VoIP and Business Intelligence is a key component of building a CX strategy that is efficient as it is adaptive. A suitable e contact center can subsequently facilitate complete customer journeys that are tailored towards individual preferences, based on insights that have been derived from other applications. This way, your e contact center becomes the lynchpin for establishing a powerful customer experience, by always keeping customer needs at the forefront.
Insightful reporting via big data
Your e contact center can be a powerhouse for generating vast amounts of data, as agents interact with customers, and customers self-engage via varied communication channels. Additionally, contact center call recording software can also be a source of valuable insights, especially for monitoring agent performance and productivity. By filtering and parsing big data for predictive insights, your e contact center can then be the means to apply changes which business teams see fit, to improve the quality of customer service that is offered.
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Integrating CRM With E Contact Center
Integrating your e contact center with your CRM pipeline can optimize your business’s overall CX strategy in a number of key ways. For one, customer service and sales teams can now stay better aligned to business goals such as targets and quotas, while providing each other contextual insights that can help serve customers better. In other words, knowing what transpired during previous customer interactions can enable both service and sales teams to construct productive conversations where no information needs to be repeated, and feedback is always on point.
Additionally, an integration between your e contact center and CRM can pave the way for marketing campaigns (such as email marketing) that are better targeted towards the specific needs of each customer. Thanks to reporting and analytics, your e contact center and CRM can work together to focus segmented campaigns on narrow customer bases, so users only receive content that they are genuinely interested in.
Once relevant engagement is observed, your e contact center can follow up via the customer’s preferred communication channel to offer additional assistance. This way, a unique customer experience is established by means of offering support which helps customers choose the product/service that is best attuned to their needs.
How to Select the Best E Contact Center for Your Business
While selecting and purchasing the best e contact center for your business is an undertaking that is dependent on specific requirements, there are certain tips and guidelines that all businesses can follow, to make the right decision. For starters, comparing e contact center rankings online can be a good way to familiarize yourself with top e contact center vendors that dominate the industry.
While online e contact center vendor comparisons are useful, combining them with a business assessment that has been prepared with feedback from your team can help you shortlist potential vendors more effectively. Since the business assessment functions as a primary point of reference for prospective e contact center vendors, demos can be customized to indicate how your business’s specific problems and bottlenecks can be solved. As a result, this will significantly aid your decision making process towards purchasing nothing short of the best e contact center for your business needs.
