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Contact Centers Planning for the Future when Approaching Technology

TMCnews


TMCnews Featured Article


October 02, 2012

Contact Centers Planning for the Future when Approaching Technology

By Jamie Epstein, TMCnet Web Editor


When contact centers begin to develop a planning strategy, it is vital that they think of their current needs, as well as outline what they may need in the future, to measure up to increasing customer demands. An important part of any plan is to drive customer satisfaction and continue to raise the bar when interacting with a wide customer base.


These businesses sometimes turn to outdated technology that could significantly hinder them from fully optimizing the customer experience.

Art Schoeller, an analyst at Forrester (News - Alert) Research Inc., recently revealed that he firmly believes companies must analyze how they utilize technology much more closely, to connect with customers more efficiently. His advice contained in a recent article is to plan to “take an outside-in approach to customer experience management in the contact center or taking the customer's perspective into account by simplifying the technology they encounter and encouraging collaboration between departments.”

Leveraging a variety of communication channels is vital in keeping individuals returning to work with your company again and again and e-mail, social media and phone calls should all be implemented.

"A customer starts a conversation on Twitter (News - Alert), then goes to the Web, then calls or walks into a retail store," Schoeller added. "The tough question is, How do you link all those? If you have a system that's out of whack, you'll have a tough time cracking that."

In addition, it’s critical that consumers feel as if they are the most important element, and when using the communication mode in which they feel most comfortable with, you are proving that they are the bread and butter of your firm.

"A lot of this is getting this architecture right," Schoeller commented. "Lots of the time people paint themselves into corners."

He outlined several things organizations can do to showcase themselves as technology decision makers for the contact center, including having robust tools disposable to agents, supervisors and managers alike, which will prove helpful when customers wish to speak with a company representative right away; gaining access to a broad amount of business transactions as old solutions can “break individual transactions across siloed applications,” as well as creating a plan that can enhance the overall customer experience.

 In any contact center environment, it’s key to get the right contact to an agent at exactly the right time with the correct information, and with a contact center plan of action in place they will have all the resources needed to continue to adapt to changes over time.

Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) is a Platinum Level sponsor of ITEXPO West 2012. To be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. For more information on ITEXPO, click here.




Edited by Braden Becker







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