The role of contact centers has reformed considerably over the years owing to rising customer expectations. Gone are the days when agents were juggling manually with large call volumes, and long wait times were acceptable to customers as a norm. Cut to today, where the world is being driven by the engines of instant gratification. Making your customers wait or repeat themselves several times over in today’s fast-paced scenario is tantamount to bidding your business goodbye, especially when they have the option to switch to better service in the blink of an eye.
This dynamically altered landscape has, in turn, accelerated the need for contact center innovation that renders agility and flexibility to contact center operations.
Amit Gandhi, CEO NovelVox, noted that, for businesses to carve a niche amidst this “new normal” and thrive in this cut-throat competition, they ought to bring in tools and technologies that amplify agents' efforts and translate to better business outcomes. From rationalized business costs to satisfied customers, contact center tools can change the contact center landscape for the better.
Navigating the shift from “cost centers” to “profit centers” with the right tools.
There is no denying the fact that investing in contact centers usually pops up the image of a cost center, owing to the high upfront costs. In addition, the majority of businesses struggle to provide good customer service, which often involves customers having to go through a frustrating process of repeating their concerns and following up with agents multiple times before their issues are resolved. This trend, however, has transformed over the years, with CX becoming a high-priority area for businesses. Most contact centers have started building on the understanding that consistent, high-quality support to customers can help them build a loyal base that is willing to advocate their brand, eventually leading to enhanced revenues and market share. Thus, ensuring a hyper-personalized customer experience can be the key to reaping better revenues and performing better than their competitors. This is the reason why contact centers ought to capitalize on the latest technologies.
Contextual Support with Omnichannel Strategy
Providing contextual support is essential for a positive customer experience. Now with multi-experience taking center stage, an average customer owning three different devices and using a range of communication touchpoints would expect an effortless and consistent experience across all. This is the reason why businesses are increasingly opting for the transition from multichannel to omnichannel, enabling agents to deliver consistent support across channels, including social media, chat, email, and phone. This approach allows customers to communicate using their preferred channel of choice. NovelVox, for example, has upped the ante with its Omnichannel solutions, rendering the necessary agility for contact centers to scale their businesses across multiple platforms and devices and pave the way for a more dynamic CX by mapping customer journeys throughout.
Reformed Self-Service with Automation
Customer self-service refers to digital support that doesn’t require direct interaction with customer service agents. And this has become a necessity for modern contact centers today. Be it online FAQ pages, enhanced Knowledge bases, automated chatbots, or smart IVRs; they can be instrumental in freeing up agents from repetitive work.
A case in point is NovelVox’s Infibot which can ensure better customer service and agent performance by resolving customer queries independently and extending efficient, round-the-clock support to customers. Leveraging the power of AI, ML, and NLP, it can read into customer sentiments and deliver accurate responses after analyzing past communication patterns. Further, the Visual IVR solution from NovelVox eliminates frustrating wait times and delivers customers what they want through a more engaging, self-serve digital menu. Much faster than the traditional IVR prompts, it drastically reduces the need for call transfers to a live agent.
Interactive Customer Journeys with CoBrowse
At times, to resolve complex customer queries, multiple interactions with an agent are required. This tiring process of communicating with the agent for repeat queries can dilute customer experience. Co-Browse is the solution for such scenarios. It can effectively reduce the number of interactions required to solve a complex query. NovelVox’s CoBrowse solution renders this assistance to customers without the need for third-party software downloads. It allows agents to securely access the customer’s screen to help them navigate through a solution and point customers to the correct page or feature in real-time. Such visual guidance can come in handy to improve resolution rates, reduce handling times and enhance customer satisfaction.
Amit Gandhi - “Customer support is not what it once was. To exceed customer expectations and improve customer relationships, contact centers need to reimagine their services from a customer-centric point of view. This requires a digital transformation built up on the latest tools and technologies, which helps agents understand customer needs with data-driven and predictive insights to improve sales and KPI conversions.”