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What purpose does your call center aim to serve? Is it designed to provide a platform for chit chat for customers or is it designed to resolve customer interactions quickly and with satisfaction for the caller? This recent Contactual (News - Alert) blog explored the difference, stressing that the call center is in place to solve a problem for the customer, allow them to buy something from you or challenge you to move the relationship forward. With so much opportunity rolled into one interaction, it is vital that you leverage it correctly.

To leverage the full capabilities of your call center, you truly need to integrate telephony and customer relationship management (CRM). This step will ensure you can easily drive First Call Resolution (FCR) and improve customer satisfaction. Call center managers tend to seek out FCR over all other performance metrics as the shorter the calls, the lower the costs and the happier the customer. When telephony and CRM are integrated, call resolution is simplified and best practices are leveraged.

You also have to pay attention to agent attrition in your call center as a high rate costs your center money. Surveys in this area suggest that the number one reason agents leave a call center job is due to a combination of inadequate training and cumbersome, confusing technology within the call center. When you integrate your CRM and your telephony, you create an environment that allows your call center agents to more easily do their job.

The integration of your CRM and your telephony in the call center can be easily driven when you leverage cloud-based call center solutions. This is truly the most effective, least expensive, fastest and most cost-effective way to support your customer base. This platform allows you to easily connect your automatic call distributor (ACD) to your home-grown or off-the-shelf CRM application. As a result, your call center can be ready to launch in just days, agents can be trained in hours and your low investment has an amazingly rapid return on investment.

Feature-rich applications in the call center can also deliver a better experience for all involved and the good news is that they don’t have to be complicated. Your agents can easily click just one button and use their CRM login credentials and get computer telephony integration to salesforce.com or NetSuite (News - Alert). When you integrate ACD and CRM in the cloud, you can easily track incoming caller IDs and pop the appropriate customer record on the screen for the agent.

Your main focus within the call center is to deliver a satisfying experience for the customer by quickly resolving their issues. And, while you don’t want to focus on the chit chat, don’t forget that a little warmth can go a long way