Contextual and seamless interactions are what every customer expects to have when reaching out to a company. Regardless of channel or location, a company should be capable of providing this type of aware customer service that smoothly routes the customer to the proper agent or channel so he or she can find resolutions with as minimal stress as possible.
Recently, 8x8 (News - Alert) announced a ‘milestone’ in its Global Reach initiative. The provider of reliable and secure cloud communications solutions to the enterprise just added a new solution to its suite: 8x8 Virtual Contact Center (VCC) Global, a cloud-based solution that links an enterprise’s international customer service agents with a single platform. The VCC offers multi-lingual chat (with automatic translation), integrated presence, call routing as well as reporting and management.
“Managing a contact center with agents and customers distributed globally brings a complex set of business challenges ranging from call quality to agent availability to reporting and administration,” said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, Customer Contact at Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert). “8x8 has once again demonstrated the value it places on optimizing the quality of voice interactions over its network with the introduction of its VCC Global offering.”
The global landscape of business today creates hurdles for the enterprise. Customer service can be an issue more of presence than effort, and typically a company’s infrastructure will cause a call to bounce around the globe—even if the agent is within walking distance of the customer—and inherently delay the customer service process. 8x8’s proprietary geo-routing technology makes quick work of this industry pet peeve, and connects the customers with the appropriate agents that can best fix the problem.
Jamison noted, “This latest enhancement to its cloud-based contact center solution not only eliminates the latency experienced when only one data center is available to route calls, it allows businesses to maximize the productivity and effectiveness of its agents while improving first call resolution by matching customers to the most appropriate resource.”
With the call center serving as the frontline in customer service, 8x8’s most recent release echoes the industry focus on the customer. As people shop with their feet today more than ever, the customer service experience is more make-or-break than ever. First impressions can last a lifetime; is it better for that to be a five-minute phone call ending in satisfaction or 20 minutes of frustration waiting on hold?
Enterprises, it’s your call.
Edited by Dominick Sorrentino