To get straight to the point, a contact center solution will give you a 360-degree view of your customer interactions so you can interact with them on any channel they use (chat, voice, email, social media, etc.)
- What’s the difference between a contact center and a call center?
- So, why do you need a contact center solution?
- 5 important points to take into account when choosing a contact center solution
A – What’s the difference between a contact center and a call center?
That first part can be confusing, often people get surprised that there’s a difference between the two. A call center is limited to voice interactions (inbound and outbound) while a contact center will connect with your customers on any possible communication channel simultaneously:
- You can therefore get a 360 view of all contact touchpoints and manage at the same time chat, email, SMS, call, and whatever channel you can think of.
In our case we’re not talking about either, we’re looking at the engine that helps make this possible. The contact center solution that is used behind.
B- So, why do you need a contact center solution?
If you want a quality CX, a contact center solution is a real asset to have up your sleeve to get high-added-value interactions with your customers.
It will redistribute inbound and outbound flows depending on your team’s skills, availability, campaign parameters, and many more factors through ACD technology.
Also contact center solutions help you create powerful CX campaigns that can include many contact touch points with one customer (example: merge SMS, email, and voice in one campaign) and that will also respond to your every need. Let’s say you want to reach back to your clients that you have a special offer, within your contact center solution you’ll be able to create a campaign specifically for those clients and reach out to them by voice, social media, email, or even SMS simultaneously to be sure they take advantage of said offer.
Another great thing to know about contact center solutions (or maybe it’s just ‘cause our products great) is that you can personalize every step of your CX communication. It’s a great marketing and sales asset.
5 important points to take into account when choosing a contact center solution
Criteria 1: To Outsource CX or not to Outsource CX, that is the question…
Depending on your needs, budget, and internal organization you might want to outsource your CX to experts in the field. Moreover, CX can become time-consuming with the shift to a “now customer” where clients need you to be on deck at all times. However, you must also be aware that no one will talk about your company as well as you do. So depending on your size, budget, and type of product you will need to weigh the pros and cons of having an internalized CX service.
Criteria 2: Get an omnichannel contact center solution
You want a 360 view of your Customer interactions right? You want every channel of communication you use with your customers to be aggregated in one platform, so that’s why you need to ensure that they effectively communicate with each other through the solution you’ll be choosing. Take a look at our product NCS or book a call with our experts to know more about it.
Criteria 3: Measure, track and become big brother
Well, you want to know what’s happening on your agent’s end right? Ry to get a contact center solution that incorporates quality monitoring and statistics tools to give you a pretty good idea of what’s happening behind the scenes. For example, on Nixxis Contact Suite we have incorporated more than 70+ ready-made reports for you to choose from.
On another level here are the KPIs you want to look at to measure your CX performance:
- Number of communications by channel
- Number of missed communications
- Communication treatment time
- Occupation rate of your agents
Criteria 4: A stable interface
Don’t you hate when your program comes crashing down? This is what you want to look at the most. The stability of the solution you’ll be using will make a huge difference. You don’t want to spend your time rebooting servers or calling the support of the said solution. Be sure to get as many details as you can on the infrastructure the solution is using for you to have a good idea of the end stability.
Criteria 5: An efficient support
Well even if you have a stable solution, you might encounter some troubles along the way, nothing bad but sometime when the Monday curse hits and murphy’s law has something to say problems arise on all ends. So be sure that the support of the contact center solution you’ll be using is available as quickly as possible.
We hope this article helped you see a bit more about what a contact center solution encompasses, reach out to us if you have any questions 😊