Capturing every interaction
Top performing businesses are embracing automation technologies within contact centres to centralise information, create a comprehensive picture of customers, and provide a slick, high-quality, seamless omnichannel experience. CRM technology, for example, has evolved to the point where systems can capture every customer interaction across every channel to accurately track and report on each individual customer journey. With the ability to unify all communication channels on a single platform, agents get a 360-degree view of the customer and can easily access the insights necessary to provide an enhanced customer experience. However, legacy technology can create challenges and we still see many companies struggling to deliver this kind of enhanced service because each are unable to successfully integrate all communication channels and fail to get a clear understanding of customers’ needs. On top of this, in order to stay ahead, companies need to continually invest in developing new channels, such as video, website personalisation technology, mobile CRM and social media monitoring tools. Failure to evolve in this way can seriously compromise customer service.Managing knowledge and agents
Alongside CRM technologies, knowledge management systems are also critical to delivering service excellence. These systems provide a repository of accurate, up-to-date information on products and services so that contact centre agents can quickly search for and access relevant data during the course of a contact and provide customers well-informed answers to questions.Streamlining customer service
Contact routing has always been a staple of the contact centre with automatic call distributor (ACD) the original technology used support phone call routing to agents. ACDs are now significantly more sophisticated and have the capability to route particular types of contact to agents who have the skills to best deal with them. Contacts can even be routed to agents working remotely or in virtual contact centres so that customers are more likely to interact with someone who is equipped with the skills to help them. In addition, today’s ACDs support the drive for continuous improvement and are able to provide detailed performance metrics for all kinds of customer interaction. Technologies that enable customers to help themselves have also been available for many years, but in the past have gained a notoriously poor reputation for contributing to a positive customer experience. With the rapid advance of technology, however, self-service is fast becoming an important part of streamlined customer service.Adopting a joined-up approach
To truly harness the power of contact centre automation, companies need to create an environment where a siloed, compartmentalised approach to customer management is broken down and gaps between departments, functions and data are joined up. New contact centre technologies can help to achieve this transformation and drive customer service excellence through innovative applications that are either built into comprehensive new solutions or can be integrated with existing systems. For more information and tips for creating a seamless omnichannel customer experience, download the free Contact Centre Buyers Guide 2017.Share this story