• IVR Service Provider
• Articles

Think Smarter: Use UC to Address Every Customer Touchpoint at Call Centers

Today's customers have many options when it comes to contacting call centers. This point was proven by a survey conducted by Dimension Data (News - Alert) in its 2013/2014 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report, in which it found electronic messaging and smartphone applications are the preferred method of contact, with the telephone being the third most popular choice, being used only as a tool of last resort by Generation Y.

This means organizations have to provide the means in which these and other touchpoints can be used by customers seamlessly without any compatibility issues. This is driving contact centers to adopt unified communications (UC) solutions to integrate the communication needs of customers.

Besides the dwindling use of the telephone, call centers now have to provide applications, blogs, email, instant messaging, rating websites, social media, Web chat, text and video as well as having the staff that understands how to use these platforms to engage customers effectively.

Using these different forms of communications, call centers will be able to aggregate more data on consumers and the concerns they have regarding the products and services they use. This allows organizations to analyze the information to optimize revenue generating opportunities and resolve issues before they cost the company valuable time and money.

By providing multiple access points to the call center, consumers now have an opportunity to give organizations a heads up as to potential problems before they go viral on social media and damage the reputation of the organization.

While introducing all these communication channels to the organization has many benefits, it is critically important to bring these different channels together so the customer is able to experience a consistent level of service across each channel. The right unified communications solution along with a customer relationship management (CRM) platform can address the way in which consumers can access the call center and manage the data efficiently.

As more consumers continue to adopt smartphones and tablets as their primary computing and communications device, it means they are going to address any grievances they have almost immediately through email, Twitter (News - Alert) or Facebook, video chat or any of the other options available to them. Not making this available as part of the call center's customer touchpoint can have a damaging effect in the long run.


Edited by Rory J. Thompson