Call Center Management Featured Article
A Few Key Ways to Improve the Contact Center Customer Experience
In an omni-channel customer service landscape where businesses have a variety of ways to communicate with customers, the phone remains a key tool for delivering a superior customer experience. That means contact centers have a pivotal role to play in delivering the best customer interactions possible, and there a number of things businesses can do to improve them.
Personalization is one of the main ways to improve the customer experience, but it must be accomplished without taxing already busy contact center operations. Technology has a major role to play, and a simple tool that can help is automatic number identification (ANI) match. This telephony service enables a business to search its database to match a phone number with an existing customer account.
The benefit of ANI match is that agents may quickly identify callers and provide a more personalized interaction. The service also relies on trusting the number displayed on caller ID, and businesses can use ANI validation to confirm that a call is coming from the device that owns the phone number. This ensures a call has not been manipulated or spoofed. Once a number is validated, ANI match services can take place.
Interactive voice response (IVR) has long been a mainstay in contact centers and remains a powerful tool for improving the customer experience. IVR self-service enables customers to navigate the IVR system on their own to more quickly achieve the desired outcome. Sometimes customers can completely resolve issues without human assistance using an IVR, at any time of day.
One of the keys to providing better customer interactions through an IVR is ensuring the self-service menu is intuitive and comprehensive. An optimized, well-thought out IVR can ultimately improve the customer experience and increase contact center savings if agent interaction time is reduced.
For those calls that can't be handled through IVR self-service, rapid decisioning can make the difference between a satisfied and disgruntled customer. If customers attempt to use the IVR and are ultimately handed off to a human contact center agent, the last thing they want to do is repeat all the information they have already given the IVR. Contact centers can use technology to generate credentials for each inbound call in real time. An authentication score may be created, providing agents with data about the caller without the need to ask repeat questions. This type of credentialing may shorten call times, resolve issues quicker, and generate a more satisfactory customer experience overall.
It's easy to dismiss the phone as an outdated mode of communication given the rise of AI, chatbots, websites and even texting for customer interactions. But voice is still a preferred communication tool, and with a few simple technology improvements, businesses can overhaul their contact centers while giving the customer experience a major boost.
Edited by Luke Bellos