Virtual PBX Featured Article

How to Give the Human Touch in the Contact Center

February 13, 2015

By Mae Kowalke - Virtual PBX Contributor

Customers are coming to expect more from the businesses they frequent. Whereas at one time a good product or service was enough, it now also is incumbent that businesses deliver a good customer service experience. Firms that don’t deliver on this desire for a good customer experience will find their customers moving to competitors.


Thankfully, technology can help.

While there are many ways that businesses can deliver on a good customer experience, one of the most important is making the customer feel like they are a person and not just a number. This both means personalizing the customer service interaction, and personalizing the agent interaction.

Customer relations management (CRM) systems are important technology for this goal.

As noted in a recent Nextiva blog post, a CRM system first of all will enable agents to know who is on the other side of the phone before they take the call. The virtual PBX system should be able to match the caller’s number with the proper CRM database entry to enable the agent to know the name and the details of the person calling.

This CRM system also should be ready to hand the agent all the details of the caller’s past interacts with the company. While customers are forgiving when an agent does not know all past interactions, they are impressed when the agent does know what went on before already. A customer feels like a person when you know their name, remember their situation, and pick up right where they left off.

 The two big adjustments to make this happen, from a business standpoint, is actually leveraging its CRM system with its PBX system; many businesses have CRM systems that are only poorly integrated, wasting the opportunity.

The second adjustment is ensuring that agents are trained and expected to enter details directly into the CRM system during the time of customer interaction. If agents are not logging details properly, the system breaks down in a hurry. If they are writing down details after the fact, data is lost and time wasted between calls.

There are other ways to create a good customer experience, of course. But good customer care starts with making customers feel special, which means personalizing. And CRM systems, properly integrated with a firm’s PBX, help make that happen.




Edited by Alisen Downey

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