8 Contact Center Technologies You Should Know About

Contact centers are the heart of your customer experience strategy. They are the first line to address customer queries, resolve problems, and build trust. In the modern world, customers want choices on how they interact with you. To meet their needs and ensure positive experiences, you’ll need to arm your team with contact center technologies.

There are a variety of contact center software options. Many have similar functionality and are cloud-based, so they are accessible anywhere. But what technologies will make a difference for your agents and employees?

Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)

ACD describes a telephony system that can recognize, answer, and route calls to the correct agents best suited to help the customer. Elevate ACD to enable even more effective distribution of calls with intelligent routing. In this scenario, you’ll use a skills-based group routing system. Customers then go to the queue of those with the most relevant training.

This is valuable for several reasons. First, customers don’t get passed around to other departments. Second, they’ll likely wait for a shorter amount of time. Third, agents will appreciate the efficiency of the workflows. It’s the foundation for any premium contact center software.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

IVR works in tandem with ACD. It’s an automated phone system that interacts with callers. It can gather the information needed to distribute the call effectively. It can also provide customers with information without speaking to an agent (e.g., get directions to a location or check a balance).

Customizing IVR can be tricky, but not when you have a wizard-based tool. Tracking IVR interactions and aggregating data are also useful to determine the effectiveness of your IVR.

What else can you do with an IVR system?

• It can also work as an outbound notification solution. Customers receive the outbound callout, and it connects them to an agent.
• Another feature to look for in IVRs is the ability to set up multilingual support.
• IVR menus can act as private data collectors for customers calling in to make payments.

Webchat

Webchat is an essential contact center technology. It provides a channel for customers that they prefer. It’s also typically more instant, which means customers on your website can get the answers they need and decide to purchase or convert sooner. So, it can boost revenue as well as keep customers satisfied.

Some characteristics to look for in a webchat option are:

• Auto-detection of device type
• Ability to collect data
• A design that integrates with your website and has an intuitive user interface
• Supportive of existing chat activation models
• Previewing for other functions like waiting in queue
• Interactive chat response (ICR) to serve visitors when live agents aren’t available

With these features, you’ll have a robust webchat module that can play a key role in customer communications.

Omnichannel Routing

In addition to ACD, your call center can integrate all channels available to customers — voice, email, social media, and chat. Omnichannel routing works the same way regardless of the communication type. This contact center technology enables you to streamline all customer interactions. It can boost productivity and ensure that your customers can conveniently contact you on their terms.

Outbound Notifications

You can use contact center technology for outbound notifications. These can be via voice, SMS, or email. It applies to many different industries, and you can customize it. Some use cases include:

• Appointment reminders
• Reservation confirmations
• Alerts for updates or outages for utility or ISPs (internet service providers)
• Payment prompts or receipts
• On the way messages
• Promotions, offers, and upselling campaigns

It’s an easy way to notify customers proactively. It can also reduce appointment no-shows and past due payments.

Workforce Management Tools

Contact supervisors need to ensure that they have proper staffing and that employees are delivering quality service. There are several workforce management contact center technologies to address this, such as:

• Schedule managers that integrate agent schedules and breaks, manage vacations and shift trades, monitor schedule adherence in real time, and generate reports.
• Quality assurance and monitoring tools including call recording, live monitoring, whisper, and barge-in, agent chat log review, and other evaluation criteria.
• Reporting and performance data with real-time dashboards, detailed queue and agent statistics, and custom options. These analytics also allow you to forecast the number of agents you’ll need at peak times.

CRM Integration

A company’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform is a central repository for information. It can provide context and insights if available to your agents. It can work in tandem with IVR via computer telephony integration (CTI). The caller information your employees need pops up on their screen as they connect with the customer.

Knowledge Management

Your agents need easy access to knowledge base articles. These can be critical in how fast they get up to speed on the customer’s issue. These materials offer your employees insight into possible resolutions for the problem at hand.

You don’t want these to be hard to find or not allow for searching. Keeping these documents in a secure and cloud-based storage space can significantly help your team.

Upgrade Your Contact Center Technologies

In review of these technologies, how does your current contact center software compare? Are you missing out on opportunities to empower agents and delight customers? You don’t have to with Intermedia Contact Center.

View all its features today and request a demo.