5 Essential contact center capabilities for improved CX

What does ‘Contact Center Capabilities’ mean?

Imagine this scenario: after purchasing a washing machine with high-end features, you’re ready to get to work, but perhaps are unsure of all the machine has to offer. Even though most companies provide free demonstration right after the product is delivered, it is only natural for the customer to miss a few details and may find some hurdles while trying to use the machine independently.

With the help of a contact center agent, you’re not completely lost as they are trained to help with product features, operations, and other model-related queries.

But, have you wondered as to how the agents are always prepared to help you with any kind of problem? The answer lies in the term – contact center capabilities. It can be defined as a list of factors that help to establish a seamless connection between the contact center agent and his/her respective customer.

What are those capabilities and how do they help?

Here is a list of 5 must-have capabilities for a contact center leader. These capabilities drive agent productivity and enhance customer experience. Additionally, they help the team leads accelerate agent performance and ensure that the business is conducted successfully.

1. Omnichannel engagement: Contact center capabilities include a contact center software/platform that manages customer-agent interactions and influx of customer information from all possible channels of communication. The software is a cloud-based platform that not only helps to store and safeguard huge chunks of customer data, but also enables data accessibility at any point in time. Through this feature, agents feel confident and adept to address the several conversation requests pouring in from various channels.
2. Skill-based routing: The responsibilities of a contact center agent are not restricted to text-based interactions. They also must attend to a few inbound calls and carry-out a few outbound calls in a day. Receiving multiple calls at the same time can be a challenging situation for a call center / contact center agent. State-of-the-art contact center platforms have ACD (Automatic call distribution), a feature that directs these calls to the agent available and capable of resolving the task at that point in time.
3. AI based customer service: Artificial Intelligence is playing a vital role in engaging customers across multiple communication channels. AI is helping by matching customers with agents who are likely to offer them the best possible solution/answer for their problem or query. This kind of intelligent routing helps to strengthen customer satisfaction and substantiate customer loyalty. Other benefits of AI include Interactive voice response (IVR) and chatbots, both of which speed up customer engagement.
4. CRM Integration: The CRM tool helps agents track and analyze interactions across all channels (from a particular customer). This kind of real-time data collection allows agents to possess a sound knowledge of the customer’s background, which in turn, allows the agent to make enriching digital engagements throughout The CRM tool also allows to consolidate customer data like phone numbers, email IDs, Facebook and Twitter handles, chat history, and more – all under one umbrella. So no time is wasted searching for information while being on a call or in the middle of an interaction, the CRM serves as a guiding light to all things customer. Other salient features of CRM include call recording, scheduling, and queue management.
5. On-cloud storage: Most integrated CRM platforms have migrated to cloud storage. Migration to clouds was greatly pushed due to the widespread adoption of remote working – allowing teams across different sites to access data simultaneously.

 Additionally, contact centers have a responsibility of safeguarding customer data by making sure it is not lost or compromised under any circumstances. Thus, having a backup of customer information on cloud is a safe way to avoid mishaps and many organizations invest greatly in security enhancements.

Contact center capabilities gain customer satisfaction

Customer demands increase with each passing day, while contact center agents find it difficult to deliver quality customer service in all situations. As organizations turn to level up their contact center strategies, increasing contact center capabilities will ultimately improve customer service and build strong customer-agent relationships for the future, perhaps positively influencing the bottom line in a results-driven era.