What Is Contact Center Software?

Businesses need to step up with growing customer demands. Only by being readily available for their customers, businesses can stay ahead of their competition. From handling customer enquiries to providing product support, the customer service team of your company has to be upon their toes. But administering the large volume of requests via email and phone becomes a major concern for them.
Contact center solution (or call centre software) is designed specially to help your service reps communicate with customers across multiple channels, including phone, live chat, social media, emails and even text messages. An omnichannel customer journey is possible with call centre solutions, helping service reps resolve issues faster and deliver outstanding customer experience.

Who Needs Call Centre Software

Contact center solution is an integral part of any business, be it large enterprises or smaller companies. Along with improving the customer relationship, contact center solutions also assists in creating direct marketing campaigns based on feedback. Call centre software provides an easy way to leverage customer data and enhance business productivity.
Once integrated with the CRM software, call center systems can help in keeping customers engaged right from the lead generation to retention. It’s imperative for every business which needs to understand the dynamics of their customer relationship and keep them engaged.

Why You Need Contact Center Solution

Do your customer service agents operate from multiple locations? Are you doing enough to sync calls across multiple locations? If operating manually, managing the distributed workforce might get difficult as the call volume increases. However, contact center software can help automate your customer service strategies and increase your agents’ productivity. Along with routing the calls to preferred agents, you can track their idle time. Also, you get the facility to track all previous business communications and record them for internal training and performance assessment. Other configured parameters like the average handling time, wrapping time, idle time of individual agent and the agents in the queue can also be considered while assigning the calls to the best available service rep.

Modules in Contact Center Solution

Integrated Voice Response (IVR)

All top contact center solutions come with the IVR software module to identify the needs of callers and route them to the most appropriate agent. In case your sales reps are busy, this module redirects calls to the waiting queue with pre-recorded messages. For instance, if a caller ‘Press 1’ for Support, his/ her call is routed directly to customer service agents.

Skills-Based Routing

This module works on the basis of customized modules for routing customer calls to specific agents or departments. Based on the specific skill sets, language and the expertise of service reps, calls are diverted towards them.

VoIP Telephony

The VoIP telephony module assists customer service reps to send and receive phone calls over an IP network. They can attend calls from any data-driven device, be it their system or phone.

Automated Call Distributor (ACD)

Along with routing incoming calls, the ACD module also assists in acquiring data based on call duration, call volume, wait time, etc. Using this module, call centre managers can engage in call monitoring to asses the performance of their service reps.

Call Queues

When all agents are busy, the call queues module plays an important role in holding callers’ attention and keeping them engaged. Even agents can view call queue statistics to make informed decisions and optimize their performance. Further, managers can configure unique call queues to each department, based on the team size and the skill set of agents.

Call Control

Call control module includes all basic call handling functionalities, such as, call transfer, mute, hold, transfer, conference and hang up. Call centre agents can transfer customer calls to someone more apt to answer their queries or take up their concerns on a conference call.

Disposition Codes

It’s an important module of contact center solution that helps in keeping the entire call centre team on the same page regarding the status and outcome of every customer call. Service agents need to set the disposition codes like ‘not interested’, ‘refund initiated’, ‘escalated to the manager’, and so on which will start highlighting on the call list.

Business Tools Integration

The best call centre system integrates with other tools like the CRM, live chat, marketing tools and help desk to get comprehensive information about chat transcripts, support tickets, conversation history overcall, and so on.

Call Recording

Your call centre agents can record and save live calls so that it can be referred to at a later date. This is a great module for live agents to assess their performance during calls. And, managers can use this module to help live agents improve their performance.

Call Monitoring

This module is useful for managers to manage their newly hired agents, and train them to take up live calls more confidently. Performance metrics can also be set to rate the performance of live agents. Managers can monitor calls from anywhere, as long as they have a system and the internet connection.

Call Barging

Call barging module of the call centre solutions allows managers to barge in on live calls and speak with the caller along with the agent. Call barging helps in optimizing the performance of agents and also assists in those situations where customers want the matter to be escalated.

Key Features Of Contact Center Solution

Whisper Coaching

While call barging is for the managers to drop in on a live call to take up the concerns of customers, the whisper coaching feature is to speak with the agent. Especially new agents can benefit from this feature, as they can get on-the-spot training during live calls.

Conference Calling

This feature is ideal for customer service teams to collaborate effectively. Be it callers, agents, managers or any other person from the concerned department, all can talk to each other and ensure faster resolution. This process eliminates the hassle of transferring calls from one department to another.

Predictive Dialler

The predictive dialler feature is available in top contact center solutions, enabling automatic dialling of several contacts in advance. Once a contact answers the call, the predictive dialler transfers it to the available agent automatically. This feature is majorly useful for the sales team to contact more leads in less time.

Real-Time Reporting

The real-time reporting feature helps agents and managers go through the performance metrics in real-time. Other factors, such as call queues, wait time of callers and abandonment time can be tracked in real-time. They can stay-up-to-date and make informed decisions.

Historical Reporting

Along with real-time reporting, call centre systems also help with historical reporting. Data related to call volume, wait time, handle time, service level and agent ratings can be generated effortlessly. These reports help in assessing agents’ performance and the customer service team as a whole. 

Multi-Channel

This is one of the essential features of contact center solutions, which allows businesses to connect with their customers via all possible channels, be it web chat, email, phone, SMS, IM or social media channels.

CRM Integration

With CRM integration, you can make complete sense of the customers’ data accumulated over a period. Details like the concerns of customers, frequent enquiries, customer feedback, etc. can help improve the overall product/ service of your business.

Advantages of Contact Center Solutions

Improved Customer Relations

If you are handling customer calls on a daily basis, call centre systems can help you offer a personalized and rewarding experience to your customers. Essential features and modules of this software will help you and your agents address queries of your customers quickly. By referring to the purchase history of your customers and their conversation with your service agents in the past, you can serve their needs quickly.

Improved Agent Efficiency

The intuitive interface of contact center solutions helps customer service agents handle customer concerns across multiple channels. Also, they can access customers’ data faster and resolve their queries with great precision. Modules like predictive dialer, IVR and automated call distribution save agents’ time. They can take up calls on the priority basis and ensure positive customer experiences.

Greater Agent Versatility

Using VoIP technology and conferencing modules, agents can respond to customer queries from anywhere and at any time. Also, agents working across multiple locations can work together and achieve greater flexibility.

Save Big Money

One of the biggest perks of having contact center solutions is cost savings. The faster your agents adapt to the contact center technology, the greater will be their efficiency. The customer preference for connecting with traditional voice channels is changing frequently, and you need to adopt the best practices to deliver optimal customer experience. Else, you will lose their trust and miss out on consistent revenue sources.

Improved Security

Cloud-based call centre software comes with advanced security features to keep the data of clients as well as the company secure. If you opt for cloud-based contact center solutions, your service providers will review and enforce security protocols on a timely basis. Thus, you will never be on the risk of losing vital customers. They will trust you, knowing that their data is secure with your company.

Buyer’s Guide

If you consider the following factors, choosing the call centre software for your business will not be as daunting as it may appear. 

Important Features for Your Business

Once you have decided the type of call centre software which is right for your business, the next important step is to list down features which are essential to serve customer needs and increase revenue. Explore different features available with an inbound call centre software/ outbound call centre software and prioritize them according to your business functions. Along with the essential features, you may need some customized functions in call software. Ask your vendor if there is any plan to develop the software as per your requirement. Else, you can look for other options available.

Contact Center Software Types

Different types of contact center software are available, which vary in terms of cost, deployment time, security, ease of use and flexibility of features. Depending upon your business needs, you can opt between on-premise call centre software, cloud-based contact center software, hosted call centre software and browser-based call centre system. Once you zero in on the type of contact software, you can narrow down on the options and get the call software which is right for your business needs.

Business Tools Integration

Another important factor to consider is business tools integration. Go for a call centre software that integrates with your CRM, live chat, social networking platforms, helpdesk and marketing automation platforms easily. The integration feature is important to enhance your team’s efficiency and productivity. For instance, with every customer call, a new contact is created in the CRM to help sales and marketing teams take necessary steps to turn leads into customers.

Flexibility

Today, call centre solutions provide more flexible features than ever. Customer service reps need just a laptop, headset and smooth internet connection to make and receive calls from anywhere. A lot can be attributed to the shift from on-premise solutions to cloud-based call centre software. Whether there is team scale up or scale down, or you are hiring a remote workforce, you can enjoy the essential features of call centre software uninterruptedly. Most of the call centre software these days are customizable, whose features can be scaled as and when required.

Scalability

When selecting a call centre software, check if you can add or remove agents easily. Also, look for other scalable features to manage the increasing call volume and unlimited concurrent calls. The software you opt for must scale with your business. Pick the one which provides simple features and doesn’t require dedicated staff for maintenance and upgrade. Ease of use and scalability come hand in hand.

Technical Support

As you and your team start using the software, you are going to need technical assistance at some stage inevitably. So, look for a vendor who has a good reputation of offering round-the-clock technical support and that too with quick turnaround time.