April 21, 2023
April 21, 2023
Today, customer service is one of the most imperative considerations for any business. No matter which business you deal in, you will not be able to engage your audience if you don’t offer valuable experiences to your customers. This is where the role of the contact center comes into the picture. A contact center is often called the heart of any business as it is where the interactions between customers and the company happen. While the traditional contact centers based on conventional telephone systems are now a thing of the past, cloud-based contact centers have brought a revolution in the market.
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According to Gartner, “CCaaS is a software as a service (SaaS)-based application that enables customer service organizations to manage multichannel customer interactions holistically in terms of both customer experience (CX) and employee experience.”
In other words, we can say that CCaaS is a cloud-based solution that primarily focuses on customer experience by allowing businesses to launch a contact center without the need to purchase any hardware or invest in internal IT support. CCaaS is is the modern alternative to on-premise call centers as it consolidates various tools required for interaction with customers – all in one place.
Through intelligent call routing, CCaaS software executes the process of transferring customer calls to appropriate agents. For this, IVR i.e. Interactive Voice Response is the technology that interacts with the callers, gathers information and makes use of NLP i.e. Natural Language Processing to intelligently interpret keywords from caller queries and use that information to direct calls to support agents.
For all the inbound calls received by a business, call queuing technology places the callers into virtual queues. The basic purpose of virtual call queuing is to ensure that every inbound call gets answered and that callers should have an idea about the time for which they need to wait before speaking to a live agent. To learn more about Call Queuing, please read this blog: What is Call Queuing and How Does it Work?
Another important feature of CCaaS is call recording. As agents interact with callers, the system records the conversation in real-time. These recordings can be accessed later for different purposes. A company can use these recordings as samples when conducting training sessions for customer support agents. Also, in legal matters, these recordings can be used as pieces of evidence that can save businesses from heavy penalties and even reputational loss.
Reporting is also a key feature of CCaaS. Analyzing different types of call-related metrics, it generates key insights which are useful for businesses in uncovering ongoing trends and preparing workforce plans accordingly. Overall, Call reporting helps in improving the performance of a business.
It might appear to many that CCaaS is a costly affair, however, it isn’t expensive at all. Paying somewhere between $50 to $100 on a monthly basis is simply pocket-friendly for businesses of all sizes. And, if we compare this pricing with the on-premise contact center setups, you will totally agree with the cost-effectiveness of CCaaS platforms. But what makes these solutions so economical? Clearly, this technology works over the internet cloud and there is no proprietary hardware involved. Also, you don’t need to invest in physical space for equipment and there is no need to hire any IT staff as well. So that looks like saving a lot of money, isn’t it?
With a CCaaS, employees or agents can do their work like taking up customer calls just from any device that supports a web browser and is connected to the internet. It’s simply amazing for modern-day businesses that are adapting to the trend of remote working and were earlier stuck with on-premise contact center setups. As far as scalability is concerned, there is nothing to worry about. CCaaS platforms are able to grow and adapt to the needs of a business. So whether it is about adding several extensions or removing a few, it can be done instantly on a CCaaS software.
A CCaaS platform is designed in such a way that customers have the freedom to connect with a business on their own terms. Whenever a call is made, the IVR greets the customer and presents them with a variety of menu options that are easy and simple to understand. Callers can simply get their answers from the pre-defined set of answers or can simply choose to talk with a live agent. This way a CCaaS helps to meet the needs of customers and thus enhances their experience with the business.
Data plays a big role in the success of any business. However, data alone is not sufficient. A business needs information in the form of customer calling trends from that data. A CCaaS solution provides such insights in the form of graphs and charts which can be really useful to make informed business decisions.
A call center is a department within a business or an independent office where multiple agents handle both inbound and outbound customer calls of the business. For inbound calls, agents provide answers to customer queries by providing technical support, billing-related answers or just providing basic information about the business. In outbound call centers, agents make calls to customers for different purposes like marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, etc.
A contact center also involves interaction between agents and customers but in this case, there are multiple channels to connect with customers rather than just phone calls. The concept of a contact center came into existence to replace the traditional call center system with a new model that allows multiple communication channels like phone, email, SMS, social media, live chat, etc.
The very basic purpose of both call centers and contact centers is to provide customer service. Both call centers and contact centers can be located within a business organization or outsourced to a third party that specializes in this field.
The main difference between a call center and a contact center is the communication channels used by each system. While call centers rely on phone systems, whether traditional setup or cloud-based call centers, contact centers leverage different types of communication channels that customers use to connect with businesses.
The basic idea behind a call center service is to provide quick responses to customers’ queries via phone calls. However, in the case of contact center service, the idea is to offer personalized interactions and deliver timely results from a channel of customer choice.
The size of your business is not going to remain the same – it will shrink and grow from time to time. You will need to add agents quickly and remove the extensions when not required. So look for a solution that can easily and instantly scale up and down. You can check about scalability and pricing models from different vendors.
Customer problems are more complex than ever before. A business simply cannot afford a high agent attrition rate. The experience offered to agents plays a significant role in their performance, engagement, and retention. Through a CCaaS solution, you should aim to ensure that employees or agents are able to do their job with complete ease. The availability of advanced features along with an easy-to-use interface in a CCaaS solution can help a lot.
Contact centers collect a wealth of sensitive customer data. Losing such data to hackers can destroy your reputation in the market apart from financial damage. So when selecting the best CCaaS vendor, be sure to probe different vendors about their data security measures and whether they stay updated with the latest security practices.
Does the vendor offer good support service? Does the vendor know for being easy to work with? What kind of reputation does the company have? Do they offer the same level of service each time you connect? Get answers to these questions to ensure that you are in safe hands.
A CCaaS Solution can be a real game changer for a contact center considering the numerous benefits it offers. If you too are in search of a reliable CCaaS Solution, then please get in touch with us. You can also read our post on Cloud Based Contact Center Solution: Key Features & How Does It Work
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Business phone systems have become a part and parcel of every company, especially the small scale enterprises.
Click to call is a type of digital communication system that allows web users to call any brand representative by clicking on a button on a website or email signature.
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