The call center is often tasked with being an all-knowing, all-seeing organization. Customers expect that when they call or otherwise contact a company, the person they reach will understand their history with the company, and even their preferences. More often than not, however, this doesn’t happen. Agents aren’t provided with all the information they need, and even if they are, it’s not provided in an easily understandable way.
The information is certainly available – often to sales and marketing, who use it for campaigns – but this is frequently useless in the contact center, according to a recent white paper by VoltDelta (News - Alert) entitled, “ACD Empowered CRM.” In a similar manner, the contact center’s databases may be dissimilar to what’s being used in sales and marketing and the back office functions, which means information isn’t shared. For organizations tasked with multichannel customer care excellence, this disconnect isn’t making things any easier.
“Frequently in place are ACD and CRM systems provided by departments within the organization that focus on their own areas of expertise without taking a holistic view of the customer,” wrote the report’s authors. “The contact center may even work with a completely different CRM system from that of the organization at large.”
The solution, according to VoltDelta, is finding a way to merge telephony and messaging with real-time and historical data, a process that will improve customer care at its core.
“At its deepest levels it means making the CRM the ‘Pivot Point’ for customer care by adding ‘Move & Manage’ (ACD) detail to each CRM record.”
With this integration, agents will have access to a unified screen that combines ACD and CRM features such as incoming caller detail with answer/transfer control together with familiar customer history information. Agents are better able to see a caller’s history and infer their preferences while they’re interacting with that customer. This cross-channel intelligence will lead to a deeper level of service, and a more personalized experience…something customers expect today.
From a manager perspective, there is more obvious correlation between call center and agent performance and bottom-line results.
“ACD stats matched with CRM revenue reporting can then be used for positive reinforcement such as results from offers, or negative feedback including reports based on calls being generated by customer confusion,” wrote the report’s authors.
The results of true ACD-CRM integration include better multichannel customer support via cross-channel intelligence, a more personalized customer experience, better efficiency and fewer errors thanks to auto-population of ACD data within the CRM system, and improved visibility into contact center operations.
Edited by Alisen Downey