As soon as your business has customers, you need to make sure you have the means to answer all of their queries. In the past, setting up a phone system and having a business email address would be more than enough. But not anymore. We live in a digital world where most customers expect you to be available on all types of online communication channels, such as social media and live chat. Contact Center software allows you to manage all of this in just one platform, helping your business provide seamless and professional customer support.
CloudTalk is an intuitive contact center software that provides solutions for support, sales, and ecommerce call centers. The company offers comprehensive automated call distribution, where you can set up extensive call routing trees and direct customers to agents by their skills. If your agents need to contact prospects in bulk, CloudTalk also has you covered. It provides a smart dialer where you can create your own campaigns, allowing your agents to be as efficient as possible when getting in touch with clients. But there’s a lot more to love about CloudTalk. We particularly like that there’s a 14-day free trial available that allows you to test everything out without paying a dime. This way, you can set up your contact center within the first two weeks and only start paying when you’re effectively using the platform.
For those looking to streamline their customer service and create a standout brand experience, VirtualPBX Contact Center might be the game-changing solution they’re looking for. Designed with modern needs in mind, this platform combines real-time customizable dashboards, seamless CRM integrations, and intuitive call flows to deliver faster resolutions and happier customers.
Whether the business is small or scaling up, s cloud-based system allows users to deliver a personalized service from anywhere, all while benefiting from 24/7 expert support. While the provider doesn’t offer fixed plans, the customizable quotes start at just $89 per agent per month, billed yearly. Users also get access to a personalized onboarding session, where the contact center team configures the software and runs through every available feature.
Anyone who believes setting up a contact center is an extremely complex thing to do clearly hasn’t tried Aircall yet. From configuring call routing to following live analytics and handling calls, everything is child’s play with Aircall. Creating an account, which includes setting up a free phone number, takes less than five minutes and your contact center will be up and running a few hours after you log into your admin dashboard for the first time. The software provides all the necessary features to run an efficient contact center and, although it lacks in some departments, Aircall makes up for it by offering integrations with over 60 applications. Better yet, you can also use the company’s API to make your own customized integrations, so you can use Aircall in any way you want. Prices start at $30 per month per user, and there’s a 7-day free trial to test the service out.
From customers booking a table at a restaurant to clients asking about their latest bill, all businesses need to have a reliable customer support system. This is where clients go to ask for help, and it’s essential that they get an excellent experience – satisfied customers are more likely to rave about your company, after all. JustCall is a comprehensive contact center software that comes with all the call handling features you could ask for. Not only will your agents be able to provide effective customer support, but your sales team will also love the automated dialer and SMS campaign management tools. Better yet, the platform can measure everything you’re doing, monitor calls in real time, and improve internal communication. With prices starting at $20 per month per user, JustCall is also extremely affordable. Sadly, the company doesn’t provide a free trial period, but the first month comes at a discounted rate of $7.50 per user.
Contact center software allows you to answer customer queries from all types of communication channels in one unified platform. In other words, it’s an omnichannel platform where you can answer requests from a ticket system, social media, web chat, and more. For example, a customer could initially contact you through Facebook and then decide to give you a call the next day. In that case, contact center software allows you to find the information from both interactions in one place, enabling you to deliver a seamless client support experience throughout all communication channels.
The software also comes with various tools to increase your contact center productivity, such as customer contact routing, key metrics tracking, and continuous internal communication. It allows you to direct customers to agents by their skill, check performance in real time, tag agents to specific requests, just to name a few.
There are three main types of contact centers: inbound, outbound, and virtual. While inbound contact centers focus on handling customer queries, outbound contact centers reach potential and existing customers. For outbound calls, contact center software provides dedicated features such as smart dialers to help agents be more efficient when contacting prospects. Crucially, virtual contact centers combine the services of both inbound and outbound contact centers.
It’s important to know the difference between contact center software, virtual phone systems, and call center apps to understand what a contact center platform is. While virtual phone systems are just a way to set up your phone communication lines, call center apps provide the necessary tools to handle customer calls. Usually, contact center software providers not only offer all the features found in VoIP and call center solutions, but they also add to the mix the ability to manage customer queries from all other communication channels.
While contact and call center agents may both use headsets, it’s easy to understand the main distinction between them after reading each service’s definition. That’s just the surface however, and there are five main differences to consider:
When searching for a contact center platform, there are a few core features that virtually all software solutions provide. To decide which additional features you’ll need, you’ll have to consider three main factors: managing customer requests, internal communication, and tracking client support KPIs.
For customer requests, always make sure that the contact center platform comes with all the necessary tools for call handling. Besides providing agents with the ability to forward, transfer, and merge calls, the software should also allow you to easily set up call routing, IVR, and call queues. Moreover, you should go for providers that offer a unified platform where agents can manage ticket submissions, social media messages, and web chat queries all in one place.
Contact centers need seamless internal communication as well, since clients hate to explain their issues over and over again. Therefore, it’s essential that the software allows agents to create tags and add notes to customer profiles. It’s even better if the platform comes with a built-in chat or at least lets you integrate with team collaboration software, such as Microsoft Teams or Slack. More importantly, it’s vital that the contact center software comes with built-in CRM or allows you to integrate with the one you’re already using.
Last but not least, the software should allow you to track KPIs in real time. Managers should be able to see how many customers are waiting for support, how many agents are available, and how long it’s taking for agents to interact with clients. It’s also crucial that the manager has the necessary tools to help agents when needed with either call whispering or the ability to join the conversation. In the end, managers also need to get a helicopter view of what’s happening in the contact center making straightforward reporting a must.
Like everything in business, customer support needs to be measured. This is the only way to understand whether your contact center is running efficiently and where you need to improve. Contact center software providers offer two types of analytics dashboards: one for real-time decisions and another for mid- and long-term strategies. It’s essential to track both, as they include helpful information to understand how to improve performance. The most crucial KPIs to measure your contact center’s success are:
As customers started to become more digital, companies developed their customer support accordingly. However, most of them just added new platforms to what they already had, ending up with a disjointed and expensive system. By unifying all communication channels in one place, contact center software offers the following key benefits:
Because cloud-based contact center software allows agents to manage everything in one place, it provides seamless communication and increased agent productivity. While there are other solutions you could opt for – such as on-premise contact centers – cloud-based contact center software is definitely the most straightforward and affordable method.
Having access to all communication channels means support agents can see the client’s history regardless of how they got in touch. This improves the customer experience tremendously, as clients can jump between their favorite communication channels without having to repeat their problem over and over again.
Contact center software allows you to set up advanced contact routing for all types of communication, which enables you to direct customers to the right department in a matter of minutes. You can set up skill-based routing, self-service solutions, VIP numbers, and more. All of this decreases the time customers spend on hold and the number of call transfers, resulting in a more efficient contact center.
Finally, all contact center platforms come with dedicated dashboards to track KPIs. While some providers can be more comprehensive than others, all of them provide real-time analytics and periodical reporting. This not only allows you to make quick decisions on a daily basis but also come up with mid- and long-term strategies.
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