Customer Satisfaction and the Integrated Contact Center

By Stefania Viscusi

TMCnet Assistant Editor

 

Today's contact center has evolved to become an important factor in the success of any company, as it is their meeting point with customers. Maintaining satisfying relationships via improved technology to meet changing customer needs has created a multichannel, integrated and more dynamic meeting point that betters customer satisfaction by ensuring faster, first- time call resolutions.

 

Because traditional contact centers include agents that are trained in a very general sense, detailed inquiries become difficult to handle on the first call. For this reason, many operations have failed to maintain customer satisfaction, which is crucial.

 

Not only are consumers demanding faster response to their inquires but with the advancements in technology today, customers are able to better serve themselves, reach out to companies via various channels, and as a result are asking more in-depth questions.

 

In a recently published whitepaper by Datamonitor for Amcat (News - Alert), "A New Model for Integrated Customer Contact," Datamonitor points to this evolution of the contact center and highlights the need for increased customer satisfaction in order to remain successful.

 

A first factor in the new model for customer service highlighted in the whitepaper points to including others within the company such as back office employees and others with varied levels of expertise into the customer service sphere to better serve customers and to unify operations.

 

Having an integrated customer contact in place makes available a larger pool of agents who can better handle contact volumes and resolve customer inquires more efficiently. In-office and at home agents, self-service systems, and branch employees can each bring to a contact center varied levels of expertise and the support needed to meet today's customer demands.

 

The importance of a unified face for the customer is especially important with inbound and outbound contact. And as customers are given a greater variety of contact channels to reach a company, it becomes essential that customers are provided consistent service including also providing the same CRM systems across the board to ensure service consistency.

 

The whitepaper also points to the next generation contact center for its ability to reduce costs, increase revenues and improve customer satisfaction.

 

For an in-depth look at these points along with case studies and charts to better visualize the need, be sure to visit the whitepaper HERE.