Providing customer service is essential for building a stable customer base that will bring you revenue for long years. Nowadays clients are highly demanding and they are no more ready to accept poor customer service practices long response times, single-contact-channel customer service models, and other things that were generally acceptable even a few years ago.
What to do in this situation? Well, thanks to technological progress, there are solutions for any company that is going to improve its customer service quality. One such solution is cloud-based call center software, and we are going to explain why it has no alternative to pick up.
What is Call Center Software?
It is a multifunctional software tool that is developed to handle both inbound calls and outbound calls, operate numerous contact channels, store customer data, integrate third-party software tools such as CRM systems or payment tools, and provide you with deep insights and detailed data about employees’ performance and other metrics that relate to the productivity of your call center.
Basically, there are two types of cloud-based contact center solution infrastructure. First is the on-premise contact center – the solution that requires you to purchase all the hardware and infrastructure on your own, including servers, laptops, headsets, landlines, desk phones, and so on. Moreover, the setup of this solution is also your responsibility – and it costs a lot.
The second solution is more high-tech and advanced, especially when we are talking about data security and maintenance. The cloud-based contact center software doesn’t require any hardware or setup, all is handled by the vendor who is also responsible for stable performance and data security. It is not only more secure, but it is cheaper and faster to set up – while an on-premise call center requires at least one week to be all set, and cloud contact centers can be ready for work in less than 24 hours.
What are the Benefits and main Features of Cloud-Based Call Center Software?
The capabilities of cloud-based contact center solutions can naturally shock any person who has never seen this tool in action. Anyhow, let’s list them in order.
Multichannel Capabilities
Cloud-based call center software can handle numerous contact channels for customer service, keeping all operational functions in an all-in-one interface without a need to switch between tabs. Additionally, all the data from all communication channels is compiled as real-time dashboards to help you track agent performance in any contact channel you need. Contact channels that can be integrated with such a call center solution include web chat(or live chat), email, social media, chatbots, SMS, and so on. If we take into account that phone calls are no more the most adored contact channel (they’re being beaten up by email and messengers), using a multichannel call center is a great advantage over your competitors.
Call Monitoring Features
You have to control the agent’s performance regularly, don’t you? That is why such a feature as call monitoring is highly important for any contact center manager, especially if we take into consideration that it has three different modes: hidden, whispering, and barging in.
In hidden mode, you can listen to conversations between agents and customers and no none of them will hear you. In whispering mode, agents will hear you while clients don’t – it is great to help agents deal with difficult situations. In barging-in mode, both parties will hear you, and this is a great mode if you understand that conflict is coming.
Call Recording
We all know that call centers record conversations with customers, but for what? You can use these recordings in the future for training sessions as live examples of great or bad performances and point to mistakes in real samples of conversations – this feature is irreplaceable for a resultative quality assurance strategy.
Outbound Dialers
In the case of cold calling, with the cloud-based call center solution you get three types of auto dialers for outbound calling campaigns – Predictive Dialer, Power Dialer, and Preview Dialer.
These tools are much more efficient than manual dialing, for instance, the Predictive dialer performs over one hundred dials per hour, while manually you can’t perform more than 33! The power dialer is great for processing warm contact lists as it needs only one agent to be all set, and the Preview dialer shows customer data from the CRM system before each call – for maximum customer service personalization.
Moreover, all three auto dialers can run multiple campaigns at the same time and bypass invalid contacts (busy signals, out-of-zone, etc.) with an option to set customizable redialing rules for all unsuccessful dials.
Detailed Reporting and Insights
What do you need to become a successful contact center leader? Detailed data about each call center operation that is going on in your organization. Thanks to cloud-based call center software reporting capabilities, you will get real-time dashboards that are customizable, so you can add or remove any metrics and rates you want.
Call volumes, agents’ statuses, average call duration, call abandonment rate, dropped calls, and so on – here are the main call center metrics you need to keep all important call center processes under control.
Conclusion
As you could guess, that is not the end of the list of call center software features and tools – you can also set up the Interactive Voice Response system to provide self-service, deal with call queues and offer callback options.
Call scripting is also a great feature for both sales agents and customer support representatives who need to keep call flow in the needed direction, see all potential ways where conversation can go, and deal with objections and questions.
You can also set up agent schedules in contact center software to control schedule adherence, and absenteeism and make needed workforce management decisions. Another great option is a third-party software integration opportunity, so you can integrate a CRM system, billing software, or a help desk tool.
