Prospects of Multi-Channel Contact Center Solution

Inclination towards non-voice activities on phone has surged exponentially in the last few years. Thanks to the availability of affordable phone sets and ubiquitous and hi-speed Internet. This development has compelled businesses, particularly, the call centers to adopt a flexible business communication system that can entertain existing and non-existing customers through multiple channels, viz., voice, email, chat, fax, social media, etc. And this development laid the foundation of multi-channel contact center solutions.

Multi-channel contact center solution has found its takers everywhere. Not to speak of call centers alone, startups, businesses, government and non-government organizations are also taking advantage of it to listen to customers and offer them the right information or resolutions that they are looking for. Noted features include call routing system, automatic call distribution, call recording, fax support, conference calling, multi-queueing and mobile-app integration. The cloud-based contact center solution can be integrated with any CRM solution for better sharing of information among different departments including sales, billing and customer service.

Multi-channel has ironed out operational challenges a lot as consumers can find multiple touch points to get resolution. They can call through their phone or raise requests online or can chat with their customer service representatives at any point of time. Automatic call distribution is recommended for those businesses or organizations that needs to deal with high call volume.

Call recording features available with the solution is quite helpful. It helps the quality department to keep a tab on different agents. It’s highly useful for training and development programs, as it helps in knowing the trainers the weakness of different members. Agents can dramatically improve their performance with timely feed backs from their respective trainers.

Call reporting is also a key feature that helps call center managers to keep their agents on their toes. They can track and monitor the performance of individuals as well as teams. They can ensure that the service level agreements corresponding to different services are met and KPI, i.e. key performance indicators like first call resolution, call abandonment rate, average time in queue, average call handling time and others are balanced.

All this will certainly help not just in improving the performance of agents and teams but also ensuring that customers are getting quick response. Hence, a pivotal thing that will steer business reputation and drive return on investment.

Getting access to affordable multi-channel contact center solution has become easier with the advent of cloud technology. Now even a startup that is constraint in budget can take advantage of enterprise-grade automatic call distribution, call forwarding, call queue management, call recording, call reporting and other features to stay competitive in the market.

No doubt there is no dearth of cloud telephony services provides that boast to offer affordable, highly available and secured contact center solution, businesses should analyze pros and cons associated with every product and integrated features before zeroing in on one, because ultimately its related to their existence and reputation. Hence, I request you not to fall prey to mere advertisements posted by them. Go deeper and read the lines between, and if necessary take help of a business technology consultant.