When we talk about the contact center, we are talking about the Business of customer service and creating an effortless customer experience. You want to make it easy for your customers to do business with you. That starts with a well outlined strategy and a proven partner who knows how to take your desired results and turn them into reality.

Here are 9 critical considerations for implementing or upgrading your contact center:

1. Pick Your Platform – Do you go premise system or cloud-based? Companies must consider their tolerance for outages, ability to maintain systems, resources for support, and the disaster recovery and business continuity plan. This will identify the benefits and weaknesses of choosing cloud over premise or vice versa. Each platform has advantages and disadvantages. Your choice needs to be carefully considered. Do not rush from one vendor to the next. Get guidance from a partner you can trust.
2. Set Standards – Setting standards in the contact center gives your agents a clearly defined expectation and opportunity for success. Customer service comes first, no doubt. And, working with agents to develop their skill-set saves money on employee turnover. Coaching and training create happier agents. That, in turn, equates to a happier and more effortless customer experience. Regardless of your platform, proper training and standards sets the tone for the team and increase chances of success.
3. Know Your Customer – It may sound basic. To some it may sound obvious. But make no mistake, there is a Voice of the Customer. You need to identify it, create your customer personas, and begin a strategy of shaping the customer journey to boost business. Customers are constantly giving you feedback. Don’t miss it.
4. Leverage AI to Analyze the Data – The modern contact center is a data-driven operation. You can no longer simply react to data. You must take interaction data from all channels and turn that into actionable information. This functionality may be part of your contact center platform or an additional solution. If you are running a system that otherwise can’t be interrupted, you can still implement data analytics to gain insights for shaping your customer journey. The modern contact centers are taking advantage of Artificial Intelligence to gain actionable insight. For example, Quality Assurance teams are seeing great increases in efficiencies by having computers review the data exponentially faster than a person can.
5. Utilize Intelligent Automation – Automation in the contact center is nothing new. Yet many still execute repetitive team tasks and processes that can be easily automated. Review your processes for all departments and understand where your contact center platform can simplify and automate those processes. Increasing efficiencies should be part and parcel with your solution.
6. Create a Blended Strategy –Some consumers prefer self-service, others prefer the human interaction. Almost all are okay with an easy to use form of both. Chatbots and other automated applications offer an easy communication channel to begin dialogue. Should the interaction require more attention it can easily be transitioned to an agent. Virtual Agents are becoming more popular and can offer rapid ROI’s.
7. Communicate on All Channels – Omnichannel customer service is the key. Consumers are communicating with your business any and every way available. Some prefer your website and bots. Others are using your application and SMS. Email is still going strong. And, there is no doubt the human agent is still quite appreciated. The modern contact center platform can interact with customers across all channels while preserving the data they have already provided. Create an effortless experience for your customers by being available. Customers don’t have time to be put hold or be passed around.
8. Optimize the Workforce – Workforce Management (WFM) / Workforce Optimization (WFO) is a process of leveraging technology to maximize the productivity of your employees, especially in the contact center. By ensuring the availability of the right resources at the right time, a properly implemented workforce optimization plan will address the needs of forecasting, agent scheduling, skills management, performance management, and employee empowerment.
9. Plan with the Future in Mind – When it comes to administration and implementing best practices for your communication systems, many businesses are falling behind. Companies are understandably focused on the revenue generating activities of the business. This often leaves daily maintenance, updates, administration, system monitoring, and simple MAC (Moves/Adds/Changes) requests unattended. Professional and Managed Services offer your company an opportunity to hand those maintenance and administration tasks over to a specialist.

AVDS has a team of seasoned and certified engineers with a proven record of success implementing and managing the communications networks and services for our clients. Our Strategic Consulting along with Professional and Managed Services Offerings make it easy for you to focus on your business with the assurance that we are always working with your future in mind.

Give us a few minutes of your time and tell us your story. We love helping companies succeed!