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inContact's Cloud-based Customer Service Software Seeing Strong Traction with Contact Center Outsourcers

By Patrick Barnard, Group Managing Editor, TMCnet

inContact's cloud-based contact center software continues to see strong adoption among contact center outsourcers, due to its ease of deployment, scalability, reliability and flexible deployment options.

Recently the company announced that a large global contact center outsourcer is now using its ECHO customer survey solution. Previously the outsourcer was using an in-house developed solution that did not provide timely customer feedback.

inContact's ECHO customer survey solution gives outsourcers a powerful Web-based tool for measuring customer satisfaction and improving customer service. Agents and supervisors can log onto this tool from any computer with an Internet connection. Each user logs in with their user name and password and the information displayed is user-specific - in other words, an agent will only see customer survey data from the customers he or she served, whereas a supervisor can view all customer feedback and what's more have it packaged into tailored reports for measuring overall contact center performance.

One of the main advantages of delivering automated customer surveys via the IVR at the close of each interaction is that contact centers are able to collect customer opinions in consistent, uniform and standardized manner. When a live agent handles post-interaction surveys over the phone, it can be difficult to avoid certain "biases" in terms of how the questions are phrased and the tone that is used. With an automated customer survey system in place, all customers are asked the same exact same questions, in the same order, and with the same "neutral" tone of voice. This results in more accurate customer survey data, and accuracy is critically important when it comes to customer surveys. What's more, studies show that customers more freely express their opinions using automated systems as opposed to live agents.

When an agent logs into the portal, he or she can see how many customers took surveys and what percentage of them indicated that their issue had been resolved to their satisfaction. In addition the agent can see what percentage of respondents rated their customer service as "excellent," "good," "average," or "poor" (etc.) depending on how the survey has been architected. The tool also provides a "quick view" of customer satisfaction using smiley faces that go from green to red (non-smiling) faces, in hierarchical order, thus giving the agent a clear picture of how well they are performing overall. In addition the tool allows the agent to compare their performance to the rest of the group.

The portal also allows agents to listen to customer responses to specific survey questions. In addition the agent can click on a link to launch a recording of the interaction for comparison purposes. This way, if a customer expresses dissatisfaction with a specific aspect of the interaction, the agent can go back and listen to just that part of the call and find out what she or he did wrong. This way the agent gains a better understanding of the problem within the context of that specific interaction. This, in turn, serves as a powerful tool for motivating agents and helping them to "self-improve."

As per a company press release, more than 100 of the contact center outsourcers' 600 agents will initially use inContact's ECHO solution, with an ultimate goal of expanding it out to the remaining agents.

This is just one of numerous contact center outsourcer contract wins for inContact in the first quarter of 2010. The company also recently announced that a major global contact center outsourcer with well over 25,000 agents in over 25 countries recently expanded its use of inContact's eLearning and Coaching solutions to an additional site, where they will be utilized by over 350 agents. These customized training and communications solutions were first successfully implemented with the company's home-based agents in 2009 and are now being implemented in one of the company's many brick-and-mortar operations.

One of the main reasons contact center outsourcers continue to adopt inContact's leading cloud-based contact center software is because it is so fast and easy to deploy. With the cloud-based model of delivery, outsourcers can quickly and easily add new applications to their portfolio. In addition they can deploy these solutions just to the sites where they are needed, thanks to inContact's flexible deployment options (which, by the way, includes a special focus on home-based agents). What's more, the extreme scalability of inContact's on demand contact center software is desirous to outsourcers because it enables them to deftly field massive spikes in call and contact volume without having to worry about purchasing additional hardware, software or network infrastructure. Lastly, inContact's cloud-based contact center software can be readily integrated with leading CRM systems and other databases - including databases that are located at the customer's site - making integration of applications and data far less costly and time consuming, while at the same time opening up powerful new opportunities for outsourcers to integrate their systems with those of their clients.