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How UC Improves the Customer Experience in the Hosted Call Center

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Today’s contact center is nothing short of critical to the success of the business operation as it is a source of customer satisfaction, revenue and more. It is no longer enough to offer customer care. The competitive contact center needs to look to the hosted call center model and the potential in Unified Communications (News - Alert).

In a recent UCStrategies podcast, Art Rosenberg (News - Alert), stressed that it is important to examine the services the hosted call center provides and understand how customers prefer to communicate. The typical customer will use multiple devices to communicate with a company. The company hoping to establish a competitive advantage will be able to offer multiple communication channels, focusing on quality interactions with each.

A number of consumers are likely to have personalized mobile devices with the ability to communicate not just with voice, but also with chat, text and even video conferencing. As these technologies emerge, the hosted call center must evolve to respond accordingly. To be competitive, the call center must be mobile and must offer multi-modality.

Rosenberg also highlighted that while it’s important for the hosted call center to understand the channels customers will use for inbound communications, it’s also important to consider how the customer will be notified. The selected business process must be not only timely, but must meet with customer expectations and capabilities.

To contribute to the topic, Don Van Doren offered his insight that most UC deployments have been within the hosted call center themselves. Presence and IM have been put in place so that agents can effectively reach supervisors and vice versa. The question that needs an answer now is how best to use UC tools to reach an expert outside of the center or one outside of the company.

Unfortunately, according to Van Doren, there are a number of challenges that prevent optimal implementations. For one thing, call center management tend to be reluctant to adopt solutions where they feel they will lose control of the call or the customer experience. For the expert, he or she tends to be reluctant to be “on call” when they have a number of things they believe are more important and more pressing to do.

It is not only important for all internal employees to understand the importance of the customer call, it is also critical that everyone understands what is needed in the customer experience and how that relates to the overall corporate strategy. That will enable the company and the hosted call center to better align actions with strategy when selecting and implementing a UC approach.

The key for any successful hosted call center is to understand the role UC plays in the overall strategy and develop an execution plan according to that role and final expectations.