Businesses are switching from on-premise to cloud contact centers because of their advanced and flexible features. However, with numerous cloud contact center providers, how do you decide which one best suits your business?
This article will look at the six most helpful cloud contact center features you should have to keep your business ahead.
1. Software Integrations
When considering a cloud contact center, look out for multiple software integrations. A cloud contact center provider should provide smooth and flawless integration with your CRM, chat solutions, payment gateways, ticketing systems, and other third-party tools.
Some providers have built-in integrations with popular applications such as Salesforce, Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics, WhatsApp Business, etc. This integration reduces data redundancy and time spent on manual processes, improves customer experience and business productivity.
With all data in sync, call center agents can have enriching customer conversations. Managers can also draw insights to make data-driven decisions.
2. Real-time Monitoring, Reporting, and Analytics
As a business, one of the surest ways to increase profit is understanding your customers’ needs and meeting them. This understanding comes from real-time monitoring, effective reporting, and data analysis.
What are your customers asking or searching for? How do your agents attend to requests? What is the average satisfaction rating from your customers? What is the call abandonment rate? The right cloud contact center displays quality metrics in real-time and makes it accessible for whatever duration you want.
These reporting metrics inform data-driven decision-making for your business. You can access performance, identify hurdles and evaluate your processes to enhance customer experience and boost employee satisfaction.
3. Omnichannel Communication
Customers want to be able to reach businesses on their preferred channels. When deciding on a cloud contact center provider, ensure to go for the one that offers omnichannel communication. Your business might be small now, but as your customer base expands, you will need to serve them on their most preferred channels.
Omnichannel routing is another essential feature in omnichannel communication. Customers do not like to identify themselves repeatedly. According to a Customer Expectation research, 74% of customers have used multiple channels and 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments.
Getting a cloud-based contact center provider with omnichannel communication and omnichannel routing is one of your best bets to getting your business ahead of others.
4. Skill-based Routing
With the rise in technology, contact center agents have become more specialized and they handle queries best suited to their skills. Skill-based Routing is a fundamental feature of cloud contact center providers that ensures calls are routed to agents with skill sets that match callers’ requests.
With every incoming call, calls are directed to not just any available agent but the one with the best-fit skills. This gives the customer a sense of personalized experience which increases customer satisfaction.
5. Team Collaboration
This is especially important for remote teams. Choose a cloud contact solution that provides team collaboration tools that allow for internal communications between agents and managers, team bonding with new employees, and so on. The team collaboration tools can also serve as a knowledge database for new hires’ internal learnings and onboarding training.
6. Flexibility and Scalability
With the right cloud contact center provider, you can quickly scale up and down, adding or removing agents without having to start installing any hardware. Smooth scalability is critical when you have a high volume of calls and need to expand your agents. It is also imperative to know the type of customer support available and how fast you can get help when issues arise. You want to be confident they are reliable and flexible enough to save your business in a messy situation if you happen to be in one.
Choosing the Best Cloud Contact Center
These features are what every business should consider when choosing a cloud contact center. The best cloud solutions allow software integrations, provide omnichannel communication, are flexible and scalable to handle expansion, and provide real-time reporting and analytics that inform decision making and boost overall business performance.
