Communicating with customers is the mantra of customer care. But with the evolution of call center solutions to encompass numerous channels, the customer can get lost in the mix as several providers have their hands in the pot.

According to a recent VoltDelta (News - Alert) white paper, the fact remains that many organizations have chosen to invest and reinvest in call center solutions that depend on an agent infrastructure to answer their calls and then have an IVR vendor to implement automation. Additionally, SMS messaging is thrown in to offer functionality of e-mail and other proactive dialing for outbound calls with another provider.

Instead, call center solutions should be more uniform and consist of multi-channel platforms within one vendor or provider. There needs to be a collaboration between all the channels involved. After all, they won’t be going away anytime soon.

To complicate things further, budgetary and IT resources impact the company’s ability to grow and offer the multi-channel call center solutions. Many of these companies facing such problems are finding call center solutions as a hosted service a great solution. Because existing systems do not offer flexible migration and integration over the course of many years, hosted services sound like a more viable option.

A hosted multi-channel service could definitely reduce operating costs while enhancing the customer experience. With voice self service and proactive reach and response, hosted services allow call centers to stay ahead of inbound calls.

Hosted services can help leverage data throughout channels and build a personal relationship with the customer. It works by collecting information from each customer interaction, no matter the channel, and having the knowledge to interact with the client and the system to provide a unique customer experience.

This will help to anticipate each customer’s needs, and each customer interaction is a learning experience. It is very important to keep an accurate reporting log of these calls in order to know if this multi-channel environment is actually working.

Going a step further beyond the initial voice recording, using an automated call dialog helps to know where the call was transferred to and can therefore give a complete call analysis. This is clearly an efficient and effective cross-channel reporting tool. It easily delivers a transparent view of the customer’s experience with the hosted system.

On Demand solutions are another component of combing call center solutions. This allows companies the ability to combine resources and partnerships. It gives them the freedom to select a telephone carrier of their choice and integrate that into agent’s desktops with other CRM packages.

It is very important during this process, in order to be successful, to create and support core elements within call center solutions. This will help the organization to adapt call management tools for agents, IVR and call recording, driving the results they want, while optimizing on the customer experience.