How Cloud-Based Solutions Help Contact Centers Perform Better

We are witnessing an unprecedented preference, among businesses of all sizes, for adopting a cloud-based infrastructure. It seems that being on the cloud is perhaps the only choice for small-to-medium scale businesses. This includes contact centers that continue to evolve, becoming more customer conscious. As businesses grow, they need a platform that helps them comprehend changing consumer habits and raise their customer service benchmarks. As the number of cloud vendors grows, decision makers at contact centers need to familiarize themselves with the basics and finer nuances of being on the cloud.

Why are More Businesses Adopting a Cloud-Based IT Infrastructure?

Reduced capital expenditure combined with the ability to improve customer service levels is at the core of most decisions that favor a cloud-enabled infrastructure. Being on the cloud helps contact centers reduce their daily operational expenses, ensure faster deployment of software or hardware upgrades, and improve the brand’s image across various channels. Using the cloud infrastructure, businesses can concentrate more on their core processes.

For contact centers, this translates into addressing more consumer queries with better outcomes, improving internal training & development practices, and creating structured data warehouses. This helps contact centers stay leaner, more agile for future growth, and intuitive to changes in market or consumer outlooks. Rather than worrying about buying expensive servers or making software upgrades, managers can channel their energies towards ensuring better compliance with customer service and data privacy protocols.

How Cloud-based IT Infrastructure Helps Contact Centers Become More Flexible

As businesses become more consumer sensitive, data driven, and socially interactive, they need a cost-effective and easy-to-adopt IT infrastructure. Contact centers too need to grow across different consumer-oriented channels. They want a greater share of the revenue pie in a very competitive marketplace. Contact centers need an IT setup that can be quickly scaled up or down without compromising security of consumer data.

Rather than being restricted by an IT system or in-house technology, contact centers prefer hassle-free, ready-to-be-deployed cloud-based services. With cloud-based solutions, contact centers can ensure uniformity in customer services even across distant, remote locations. The concept of centralized contact centers is becoming outdated. With consumer data always available on the cloud, managers can better delegate and distribute their time and resources for training and employee-development initiatives.

How Cloud-Based IT Infrastructure Helps Contact Centers Ensure Business Continuity

As cloud-based contact centers don’t have any hardware, software, or location-related limitations, there are minimal chances of any downtime. This also helps contact center managers to establish smaller, regional (feeder) units. Cloud-based functionality makes it easier to get faster decisions from senior managers and administrators who are often on the move. These personnel merely need to log into the cloud-hosted interface and resolve queries. For customers, this means quicker resolution, improving the overall quality of customer service. This kind of business continuity advantage is difficult to find in any other type of IT infrastructure. Using cloud-fueled interactions, senior managers can run collaborative online training programs even as they travel to explore newer markets.

How Cloud-Based Contact Centers Benefit from Integration of Different Channels

Multiple channel integration has surfaced as the most talked about aspects of using cloud technology. For businesses, staying connected with customers and having conversations across different mediums has become a critical requirement. This kind of interaction cannot be limited to merely answering customer queries or offering product information.

As businesses become more data intensive, contact centers are turning into a key, integrated resource that helps to collate, interpret, and use data for driving profits. Today, contact centers are regarded as an important touchpoint where critical data about customer behavior is generated. Agents are expected to help customers drive through various channels such as social media and emailing.

With more customer data available for analysis, contact center managers can create better tools for predicting customer behavior. This interaction also provides clarity about the utility of different types of promotional campaigns—underlining why marketing departments are increasingly collaborating with contact center agents.

Decision makers at contact centers should fully understand the implications of adopting the cloud. When comparing different cloud vendors, evaluating how well the solutions on offer match the organizational objectives is recommended. Apart from being reliable and easily accessible, cloud-hosted solutions must be coherent with the ROI projections. It is better to make detailed ROI analysis before consulting a cloud solutions provider. Security is an equally important factor. It is better to search for vendors with a proven, solid platform on offer.

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How to Provide Better Service to a Customer Who Calls

When customers contact your support center, they deserve nothing but the best treatment. If the customer is unhappy with the telephone support they receive, they are unlikely to buy your products or services again. Still, many organizations upset their customers with poor phone handling.

Both small and large organizations commit this mistake. The truth is that most companies don't want their customers to call them. They would like the customer to check out the FAQ section on their website. And if they can't find the answers there, they would like the customer to use the live chat facility on their website or communicate through social media.

 

Companies just don't want the customer to pick up the telephone. However, most customers who call the help desk have already tried one or more of the three methods mentioned above. They picked up the phone as their last resort. And if they still don't get the answer, you can imagine how frustrated they will be.

If you are guilty of annoying the customer with poor call handling methods, you need to review your practice. You should get the process checked by a team of qualified professionals. Here's what you need to do.

Imagine that you are the customer and try calling the support center

Listen carefully and try to analyze the experience. You have probably already done this. You need to do this again.

If your telephone system provides useless information remove them. For example, when a customer calls your phone system might ask them to listen carefully because your menus have changed. The truth is that customers don't care whether your menu has changed or not. All that the customer wants are solutions. The customer wants to be able to talk to the right person without any delay.

Try to minimize the steps involved in getting to the right person. Don't frustrate the customer with numerous instructions. Instead, simplify the process.

Find out which category of customers calls you more often

If you are running a physician's office, the people who are more likely to call are patients. In this case, you should tell them to press 1 to make an appointment. Don't ask them to press 5 or 6. The option that applies to the category of people who call more often should always be stated first.

Don’t refer them to your website

Don't ask customers who have called your support center to visit your website to find a solution to their problem. In all likelihood they have already tried that method.

Revise your customer representative scripts

Perhaps you need to make your team more engaging and respectful. Customers don't want to listen to programmed scripts. Instead, they want to listen to a real human being who can understand their problems and suggest appropriate solutions. Remember that for most customers their problem is unique and they expect you to handle it with the seriousness it deserves.

Hire the right people and provide them the right training

If your customer care team is efficient, there will be fewer issues. You also need to invest in the right hardware. Provide an empowered environment for your team members to work in. This will help you earn the loyalty of your employees and customers.

Remember that the way you handle customer calls affects their level of satisfaction. When they call you, make sure that they are greeted by a real person with real answers.

LeadXL provides accurate, actionable information and analysis, resulting in increased conversion of leads from ALL sources. Lead XL was built for lenders following a clear path to success: Analyze. Revive. Enhance. Contact Lead XL today!

How Customer Contact Centers Are Going to Change Over the Next Few Years

Thanks to the credit crunch, companies have realized the need to adopt a customer centric strategy. However, contact centers are unlikely to undergo major changes over the next few years.

What are the possible changes?

Now that new and innovative products are making their foray into the market, we should definitely see an improvement in customer care. Several organizations have already turned to cloud-based systems to improve the performance of their contact centers. There are also many organizations that have not yet woken up to the challenge.

The problems facing the contact centers

The most important factor that is still preventing many companies from upgrading their contact centers is the lack of budgets. Another reason is that organizations have not yet felt the need to change. Contact centers have been around for decades and have established a certain way of doing business. They just don't feel the need to embrace change anytime soon.

It is true that all organizations now want to be customer centric, but very few have got the right technology and people in place to deal with an empowered customer. Budget constraints are another major problem. Most organizations allocate nearly 90% of their operating budget to run existing systems. They do not have enough money to invest in newer systems.

Furthermore, running a contact center is hard work. Agents can go sick and customer problems can go unresolved. As a result, call center managers do not have enough time to explore the market to see if new technologies or products are available. All of these factors prevent them from adopting change.

The slowly changing face of call centers

The biggest change so far is the adoption of VoIP technologies. Now nearly 50% contact centers use VoIP. However, this change is largely fuelled by a desire to reduce operating costs. What's more, those contact centers that use VoIP do not use all the available features.

Another area that witnessed growth is the deployment of automated tools like IVR. Unfortunately, these tools have not yet been able to significantly improve the customer service.

Contact centers of tomorrow

Things are unlikely to be all that different 3 or 5 years from now. Over the next few years, the most likely changes will be the investments in VoIP technologies. There will also be some workforce optimization.

The two things that give hope to people expecting a sea change in customer care are the rise of cloud solutions and the increasing empowerment of the customer. Most companies now realize the need to improve their customer service. This will definitely encourage companies to invest in technologies that support multiple channels.

Gone are the days when letters and telephone were the only tools customers had at their disposal. Now they can contact the support center via multiple channels including text messaging, chat, and video. Applications that can personalize web-based interactions will also be popular in the future. There will also be an increase in the number of companies using smart desktop and web-based systems.

As we have already seen, the biggest change will be the adoption of cloud-based VoIP solutions. When companies use cloud systems, they do not have to invest in expensive hardware and software. Using a cloud-based solution is as simple as using a traditional web browser. As a result, agents and customers can use them easily.

Social media

Customers are increasingly taking to the internet to voice their complaints. Tools that allow companies to integrate social activity to their customer handling strategies are also likely to be popular.

In short, customer contact centers are unlikely to change much during the next five years or so. However, customers are more likely to receive better service.