Quality customer support is the best way to increase a brand's credibility. Nowadays, businesses are more concerned about providing top-notch customer support round the clock.
One of the main modes of supporting customers is through phone calls. Even with the digital age, where everything is instant messaging, people still chose to call and connect with humans to solve their queries. Talking over a call to sort out any problem automatically builds trust between the customer and the agent.
However, phone support is a tedious maintenance task. It is time-consuming with less return on investment. Without contact center software, it would be very hard to maintain quality customer support.
With no software in place, customers will be waiting for a long time until the agent is free. The whole customer support might feel chaotic without proper coordination. No software also means no metrics and insights of the calls; therefore, it would be hard for the managers to measure the call's quality and improvise their services.
Features of the contact center software
Call Routing
Contact center software solutions offer call routing options, which enable the customer to connect with the right agent quickly.
Under call routing, there are multiple configurations to choose from. You can choose to directly route the call depending upon the customer's previous interaction data, or you can also allow the customer to select the department they need their call to be routed to. This ensures more clarity and less confusion between the customer and the agent right from the beginning itself.
Multi-channel integration
Contact center software is not confined to phone support only. It allows you to integrate the call support with other channels. That is, contact center software will collect, store, and distribute customer data across other communication mediums like SMS, email, etc. This will give an omnichannel support experience to your customers.
Outgoing calls
Proactive customer support includes both inbound calls and outbound calls. You need to make outgoing calls to connect with your customers to follow up or update on your products or services.
The sales team might collect the customer data depending upon their query and make outbound calls to pitch a product or service.
Outbound calls are necessary to increase sales and generate revenue. Therefore it is important to have a contact center software that supports logging customer details and facilitating outbound calls.
CRM Integration
CRM is used to increase the understanding of the customer's context so that the agents can readily help them.
Without CRM integration, it is hard to keep track of customer records. The customer has to repeat their issue every time they call. This will frustrate the customer and end up in low-quality customer support.
On the other hand, having CRM will prevent the customer from repeating the issue multiple times. It will also increase the customer experience and save a lot of time.
Apart from the above-mentioned features, vendors also provide much other predictive analytics and software for smoother customer support. Some of them are listed below
- Chatbots or digital agents that are pre-programmed to handle any repetitive or simpler questions.
- Live AI suggestions with real-time data for agents on-call with customers.
- Call recording for improving the customer context understanding.
- Quality monitoring for monitoring agent performance to improve the service provided.
- Call analytics, including average wait time, call duration, call handling time, etc.
- Historic and Real-time reporting.
- Customer interaction patterns ( SMS, phone, email, video) to format and categorize the customer data according to their interaction mode.
Factors to consider while choosing a contact center software
- Choose the type of contact center software that meets your business requirement.
- Consider the features of the software.
- Make sure to check if the software allows business tools integration ( like CRM, social media platforms, etc.)
- Do a test run for the software to check if it is easy to comprehend and use.
- Choose a contact center solution which provides an easy to understand training materials.
- Opt for flexible software. The software you choose should support cross-platform migration.
- Implementation time should be minimal.
- The chosen software should help you scale your business. Scalability is a must-check factor to consider.
- Choose software that provides seamless technical support 24/7.
Pricing
Contact center software pricing is quite tricky. The software is usually charged for every minute you are on the phone. The charges could turn out to be more expensive than expected. Therefore, before committing to any customer support software, it is imperative to analyze the package and confirm the package's features.
