Operating a successful call center is much like the old variety show act of plate spinning. The goal is to keep several plates, elevated by mounted sticks, spinning at the same time. In order to do this, you have to run back and forth giving slowing plates a spin. Once those plates are going, inevitably others are beginning to wobble, and if you don't get to them fast enough they'll fall and break.
Call center managers know this exercise all too well. Once a management solution like scheduling is moving along, then there may be “wobbling plates” over in customer experience. We go give customer experience a nice spin, and then we have to run over to monitoring because it’s starting to slow. It seems to never end. However, there is an easy answer: Unification of solutions. By unifying all of these elements with one solution that can include workforce optimization, workforce management, quality monitoring, customer survey, speech analytics, text analytics, and even eLearning you’ll see immeasurable benefits almost immediately. Wouldn’t you rather only have one plate to spin?
Unified call center systems have a more organized administration and can input reports more easily. Changes and new information are reflected across the entire system. Consolidated monitoring and recording in a unified contact center also allows for real-time monitoring and recording of each customer contact from call initiation to completion. The result is a better customer experience overall — with more accurate, consistent interactions. A unified solution allows management to better monitor and assess agent task completion and overall performance as well. All channels are centralized allowing for a greater understanding of what customer needs are and how to make necessary improvements.
Unified communications solutions almost always mean an increase in one’s return on invest (ROI), or lower costs and/or higher return. Obviously, adding a unified system in a call center with no integration is the easiest transition because it can easily fold in to existing infrastructures. A unified system also eliminates ongoing version upgrades that are normal with managing several systems. This reduces the amount of staff needed to manage those updates. It is also much easier to troubleshoot issues in a unified environment. Considerable time and money is saved when you don’t have to figure out which systems are causing what problems.
With a unified system, agents can help make customers happy faster, improving overall customer experience. Unified systems eliminate the need to have to access customer information for several different places and give agents a better view on what needs to be done to satisfy the customer’s need. Centralized data also enable agents to see in one place, a chat that happened the day before, an email from last week or a phone call last month without the customer having to walk through every previous interaction with the organization. Additionally, when a contact center is unified, customers are more likely to have the same, or a very similar experience, regardless of how they interface.
Most unified solutions allow agents to log into one system instead of multiple systems, several times per day. The ability to easily transition between tasks and channels of communication enable agents to be more productive and ultimately happier, stronger representatives of your organization.
At Kova Corporation, we offer unified workforce management solutions that can help improve the efficiencies and outputs of your contact center. If you need help assessing the needs in your call center, contact us to get pointed in the right direction.
