Old contact center technology has long been the bane of consumers navigating complicated phone trees and impersonal agents. Fortunately, it’s being replaced by innovative, integrated solutions that capitalize on your relationship with buyers. In this post, we look at the best of them.

In today’s competitive climate, every customer touch point is critical for customer satisfaction and data acquisition. The right contact center technology, also known as customer service call center technology, can make the difference between efficient call management and lost opportunities.

At the heart of this new technology is elevating the customer experience while capturing crucial sales information.

The market can be a hodge-podge of independent software platforms, lacking integration and standardization. In fact, nearly half of support professionals believe their current technology hampers them from achieving their goals.

Simply put, this can negatively impact both customer service agents and customers. 

If any of this sounds familiar, it could indicate your own tech is out of date.

Contact Center Technology

Signs You Have the Wrong Contact Center Technology

You know you are in need of a makeover if your contact center technology:

  1. Is made up of incongruent systems
  2. Requires agents to do manual, repeatable tasks
  3. Gives you little insight into agent performance

How Is Innovative Contact Center Technology Different?

Well-executed contact center technology creates a real-time, events-based connection between your telephony system, customer relationship management solution (CRM), marketing automation platform, and other tools you may employ.

When all your tools are integrated through one system, agents can get the information they need to help customers and optimize your operations in the most efficient manner

And the right contact center technology can both:

  • Engage customers. Specifically, those who you’ve worked so hard at acquiring
  • Help retain agents. Free-standing tools lacking integration can frustrate agents, leading to higher dissatisfaction and turnover. The right solution reduces the costs of acquiring and training new agents

8 Must-Have Features that Can Help You Clear More Calls

So, what are the eight must-have features that can help you clear more calls? We lay it out for you here:

1. Screen-Pop

Screen-Pop refers to a functionality where a specific customer’s information automatically populates on an agent’s computer screen when the agent answers a call from that customer. It’s enabled by computer telephony integration (CTI) technology, which integrates the contact center solution with applications like a CRM, ticketing system, or order entry system.

2. Custom Reporting

Your contact center technology should provide you with insights into agent performance and customer experience. Reporting should include key performance indicators (KPIs) like call time, queue time, talk time, and hold time. It should also track first call resolution and customer satisfaction ratings.

Tracking these metrics will help you make meaningful, data-driven business decisions and tweak your technology to meet your individual needs. Hourly, daily, weekly, and real-time reporting provides insights into where you have the chance to improve agent performance and the customer experience.

3. Click2Call and Softphone Control

As a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Click2Call gives customers an easy way to contact you by simply clicking on a link to initiate the call through their computer or mobile device. It eliminates the customers’ need to cut and paste phone numbers, change screens, or remember phone numbers.

Softphone control is a software application that mimics the functionality of a desk phone on your screen without the need for hardware. All the tools for the call are at your disposal. Click2Call can also initiate the contact through your CRM platform, only if your contact center technology allows it.

4. Jobs Engine

A job engine within your contact center technology should synchronize products and other systems, databases, web services, and more to give the agent greater information to service the customer. Users, tickets, items, and other job-related pieces of information should also be automatically created in real-time.

5. Call Recording Integration

Call recordings should automatically archive in your telephony system, CRM, or other external integrated system.

This feature preserves a record of the call and gives managers the ability to monitor and evaluate agent performance, provide additional training, or make changes in the system. It also keeps managers in the loop as changes in consumer needs or behavior may dictate adjustments in training or operations.

6. Voice Mail Integration

With voice mail integration, agents can listen to recordings or messages and return calls faster and more efficiently. It also ties the message to the customer’s information and history in the integrated CRM system, providing the agent with valuable data at their disposal to provide a better customer experience.

7. Call Metrics Integration

Call center metrics are quantitative and qualitative measurements for tracking how productive your call center agents are. This helps you ensure they’re offering the customer experience you’ve trained them to. 

The KPIs should focus on the customer experience and satisfaction. It should also key on how efficient and effective your contact center technology is. This includes things like:

  • How quickly agents address and resolve customer issues and complaints
  • How many calls were missed due to agents being unavailable to assist 
  • The average time agents spend on calls and how it compares with industry standards
  • How long customers wait on hold before someone answers their call and is able to help them
  • How satisfied customers are at different stages of the customer service experience

8. External System Integration

External System Integration addresses the linking of separate computer systems and software applications both physically and functionally to act as a coordinated, seamless unit.

Call centers must interact with many different systems, both internal, or within the business, and external, like at client locations, to complete their calls and business processes. This is a crucial part of any contact center technology.

A Complete Solution

CDC Software is a premier provider of turnkey integration solutions for contact center and customer relationship technology. 

The CDC solution features Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). Its comprehensive package can be deployed in weeks in the cloud, on premise or in a hybrid environment.

CDC creates a real-time, events-based link between your telephony system, CRM, marketing automation platform and other performance solutions. That means customer service agents get actionable caller information delivered directly to them before they can even say hello. And when the call is done, everything is logged and recorded instantly.

Integrated metrics provide management with feedback on KPIs and lets you tailor processes based on these indicators.

CDC’s software allows you to integrate your telephony and CRM systems, giving call center agents the information they need to satisfy customers on every call. Find out more by contacting our team.